IPER1 


VVJ 


THE  IMPERIAL  ORGY 


BY  EDGAR  SALTUS 

HISTORIA   AMORIS 

IMPERIAL    PURPLE 

THE    POMPS    OF    SATAN 

MARY   MAGDALEN 

THE  LORDS    OF   THE  GHOSTLAND 

THE   PALISER   CASE 


PETER  AT  THE  MARRIAGE  I 


ST  OF  If TS  FAVORITE   I)W\RF 


The  Imperial  Orgy 


An  Account    of    the   Tsars   from   the 
First  to  the  Last        ^*        ^        J>       j* 

EDGAR  SALTUS 


New  York  j*  jt  jt  J> 
Boni  &  L  i  v  e  r  i  g  h  t 
(Incorporated)    &    jt    1920 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
EDGAR   SALTUS 


ura. 

DK 

5  m 


To 
O.  S.  C. 


THE  IMPERIAL  ORGY 

I  Ivan  the  Terrible  I 

II  Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  25 

7/7  Peter  the  Great  50 

IV  Imperial  Sables  81 

V  The  Northern  Messalina  104 

VI  Venus  Victrix  127 

VII  Paul  iso 

VIII  The  Last  Despot  160 

IX  King  Terror  103 

X  The  Whirlwind  216 


Vll 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

Peter  at  the  Marriage  Feast  of  His  Favorite  Dwarf 

Frontispiece 

Facing 
Page 

Tsars  and  Tsaritsas from  Ivan  to  Catherine  II        i 


Ivan  the  Terrible 

12 

Boris  Godunov 

28 

Dmitri 

44 

Peter  the  Great 

60 

Peter  II 

go 

Elizabeth 

106 

Catherine  II 

130 

Paul  I 

JS4 

Alexander  I 

I/O 

Alexander  III 

• 

210 

Alix  of  11  esse,  Wij 

V  of  Nil  holds  thi  La.'t 

226 

IX 


THE  IMPERIAL  ORGY 


"Hell  bows  down  before  the  tsar." 

Swinburne 


TSARS   W'l)  TSARITSAS 

I  l"/-.!    [VAN   TO    CATHERINE    II 


THE  IMPERIAL   ORGY 


IVAN  THE  TERRIBLE 

TIMUR  and  Attila  dwarf  Ivan  but  not 
very  much.  In  the  fury  with  which  At- 
tila pounced  on  civilisation  there  is  the 
impersonality  of  a  cyclone.  Timur  was  a  homi- 
cidal maniac  with  unlimited  power  and  a  limit- 
less area  in  which  to  be  homicidal.  Where  he 
passed  he  left  pyramids  of  human  heads  and 
towers  made  of  prisoners  mixed  with  mortar. 
Where  Attila  passed  he  left  nothing. 

Ivan  turned  cities  into  shambles  and  provinces 
into  cemeteries.  A  cholera,  corpses  mounted 
about  him.  But  death  was  the  least  of  his  gifts. 
He  discovered  Siberia.  That  was  for  later 
comers.  For  his  immediate  subjects  he  discov- 
ered something  acuter.  To  them  he  was  not 
cholera,  he  was  providence. 


2  The  Imperial  Orgy 

From  some  he  had  the  epidermis  removed, 
after  which  they  were  flayed.  Others  he  carved, 
a  leg  or  an  arm  at  a  time,  which  he  fed  to  hounds 
but  seeing  to  it  that  the  amputated  were  sus- 
tained with  drink,  that  their  vital  organs  were 
protected,  seeing  to  it  that  they  were  tended, 
nursed,  upheld,  enabled  as  long  as  possible  to 
look  on  at  the  feast  of  which  their  limbs  were 
the  courses.  Others,  tied  in  sacks,  were 
trampled  by  maddened  horses.  But  some 
danced  to  his  piping.  Put  in  cages  they  were 
burned  alive. 

The  red  quadrilles  were  invented  not  by  him 
but  by  the  dancing  masters  whom  history  called 
conquerors  and  who  developed  into  kings. 
These  beings  were  divine.  They  had  the  right 
to  slay  and  crucify  and  they  did  crucify  and  slay 
those  that  wished  to  be  free  and  those  also  that 
had  disrespectful  thoughts.  To  wish  to  be  free 
was  sacrilege.  To  be  disrespectful  was  contrary 
to  every  law.  In  either  case  the  penalty  was 
death  preceded  by  torture  and  what  could  be 
more  reasonable?  All  men  are  mortal.  To 
them  all  a  divine  providence  dispensed  the 
greatest  possible  variety  of  ills.  Kings  who 
were  themselves  divine  imitated  it  all  they  could. 
It  was  in  this  manner  that  Ivan  became  a  provi- 
dence to  his  people. 


Ivan  the  Terrible  3 

Born  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury and  crowned  when  a  lad,  for  nearly  fifty 
years  his  sceptre  was  an  axe.  He  killed,  as 
haematomaniacs  do  kill,  for  the  joy  of  it.  Be- 
fore killing  he  tortured.  That  also  was  a  joy. 
It  was  not  only  a  joy,  it  was  his  right.  He  pos- 
sessed, in  fee-simple,  a  sovereign  monoply  of 
evil. 

To-day  it  seems  incredible.  There  is  some- 
thing that  exceeds  it.  To  his  quivering  people 
he  was  a  god,  a  god  to  be  feared  as  divinity 
should  be,  but  also  to  be  adored.  In  life  a 
mythological  monster  and  in  death  a  satyr,  he 
was  beloved.  That  is  the  incredible.  It  is  also 
irrefutable.  Karamsin,  the  historian  of  the 
early  tsars,  states  it  with  pride.  His  statement 
annalists  of  the  day  confirm.  When  Ivan  died, 
the  nation  in  its  entirety,  not  excepting  the  chil- 
dren of  his  victims,  put  on  sackcloth  and  ashes. 
The  horrors  of  his  reign  had  fascinated  Mus- 
covy to  the  point  of  insanity. 

In  the  history  of  Western  Europe  there  is  no 
parallel  for  his  atrocities,  nor  is  there  any  for 
the  servility  with  which  they  were  endured.  In 
considering  that  abjection  one  cannot  but  con- 
jecture that  his  subjects  were  insane.  Perhaps 
they  were.  The  acceptance  of  atrociousness  is 
as  insane  as  its  perpetration.     None  the  less  and 


4  The  Imperial  Orgy 

assuming  the  insanity  of  all  concerned,  Ivan  had 
a  purpose.  That  purpose  he  achieved.  He  put 
a  seal  on  Russia,  the  seal  imperial  which  was 
blood-red. 

Russia  then  was  Cimmerian.  Ages  earlier, 
to  poets  who  had  not  been  there,  it  was  a  land 
where  gnomes  fought  for  gold  with  griffons  in 
the  dark.  The  poetry  tempted  adventure. 
Triremes  entered  the  Euxine,  beyond  whose 
hither  coast  the  gold  was  rumoured  to  be.  It 
must  have  gone,  the  goblins  with  it.  Instead 
were  whelps  of  demons  that  clothed  themselves 
in  human  skins  and  who,  through  gaps  of  time, 
vanished  utterly.  It  was  forgotten  that  they 
had  been.  They  were  but  brooding.  In  sep- 
tentrional fens  they  lurked,  separating  and  segre- 
gating into  clans  affiliated  and  yet  distinct. 

Ultimately,  from  the  White  Sea  to  the  Black, 
a  horde  descended.  They  called  themselves 
Slav,  a  word  that  means  glory.  The  territory 
that  they  occupied  was  outside  of  Europe,  out- 
side of  the  world.  Unknown,  it  had  no  name. 
It  was  not  until  the  ninth  century  that  it  got  one. 
The  Slavs,  meanwhile,  might  have  been  content 
to  continue  to  be,  had  not  the  scenario  of  events 
prevented.  Unknown,  they  were  unmolested, 
consequently  they  fought  among  themselves, 
fought  in  fights  internecine  and  therefore  the 


Ivan  the  Terrible  5 

fiercer,  from  which  the  victors  emerged  masters 
and  the  vanquished  slaves.  Masters  are  not 
necessarily  amiable.  These  also  fought  and  for 
the  very  human  reason  that  each  wanted  to  lead. 

Equality  does  not  tolerate  grades.  Preced- 
ence being  impossible,  from  the  roof  of  the 
world  they  haled  a  Norse  pirate  and  gave  him 
the  pas. 

The  pirate  was  Rurik.  He  was  chief  of  a 
crew  of  rowers,  that  is  to  say,  of  russi.  Russia 
came  then  into  being  and  with  her  a  throne  that 
was  to  become  the  tallest  bit  of  furniture  on 
earth,  a  throne  so  tall  that  when  the  last  incum- 
bent was  tossed  from  it  into  Siberia,  the  trajec- 
tory was  wider  and  higher  than  any  that  history 
has  beheld.  Vespasian,  when  his  hour  had 
come,  gestured  finely: — "This  is  death  and  an 
emperor  should  meet  it  standing."  At  death's 
approach,  it  is  said  that  the  last  of  the  Russian 
emperors  fainted. 

Rurik  was  not  emperor.  He  was  the  turnkey 
of  the  enigmatic  door  that  opened  on  a  history 
that  was  to  be  an  uninterrupted  crime  and 
which,  already  a  sea  of  blood,  mirrored  then  a 
record  of  murders,  sacks  and  massacres;  a  chron- 
icle of  nightmares  tangled,  obscure  but  always 
atrocious,  and  yet  merely  preludes,  the  overture 
to  an  empire's  gestation  or,  more  exactly,  the 


6  The  Imperial  Orgy 

preliminaries  to  the  construction  of  the  cage  in 
which,  bent  double,  the  empire  was  to  live. 

From  the  sea  of  blood,  pictures  mount;  gleams 
radiated  from  Byzantium,  ascending  cupolas, 
glittering  domes,  the  torches  of  civilisation,  art 
and  beauty — submerged  suddenly  by  an  ava- 
lanche of  Asiatics  shoved  over  the  Urals  by  the 
Khan  of  khans;  the  conquest  of  Russia  by  the 
Mongols;  the  lording  of  her  by  a  despot  whom 
it  took  years  to  reach. 

More  dimly  are  glimpses  of  peasants,  heavy- 
witted  as  cattle,  feeding  like  cattle  on  straw. 
Behind  them  rise  the  outlines  of  cities:  of  Nov- 
gorod that  styled  herself  My  Lord  Novgorod, 
and  of  Moscow  that  from  Mongol  made  Russia 
Muscovite  and  where  the  Rurikovitch  lifted 
themselves  into  tsars.  Additionally,  there  is  a 
Rembrandt  touch  that  was  due  to  the  khans. 
Sprung  from  hell  they  had  sunk  back  there. 
For  souvenir  they  left  night. 

Russia  then  was  pitch-black,  and  not  black 
merely  but  dumb,  a  desert  of  ignorance,  a  land 
apart,  the  pasturage  of  cattle  that  a  hyena  ruled. 
The  cattle  had  one  privilege,  one  only,  but  in 
itself  very  great,  the  right  to  obey.  Serfdom, 
an  invention  of  the  operatic  Boris  Godounov, 
came  later.  Designed,  very  liberally,  to  pre- 
vent economic  and  military  deficits,  it  turned 


Ivan  the  Terrible  7 

cattle  into  fixtures,  bound  the  peasant  to  the  soil. 

In  the  days  and  particularly  the  nights  of 
Ivan,  cattle  were  free,  at  least  to  die.  Apart 
from  that  added  privilege,  they  were  use- 
ful to  the  upper  classes,  one  of  which  Ivan  com- 
posed uniquely.  The  remaining  population  was 
made  up  of  prelates,  nobles,  vassals,  whose  lives 
and  possessions  were  Ivan's  absolutely,  all  in 
all,  in  the  same  manner  that  Russia  was.  The 
realm,  his  personal  property,  was  a  private 
estate.  It  lacked  a  fence.  About  it  he  ran  a 
ring  of  forts.  The  estate  became  a  park.  In 
that  park  the  modern  history  of  Russia  begins. 
In  it  germinated  the  seed  of  progress,  the  onward 
policy  and  the  martyrology  of  uninterrupted 
crime. 

The  potential  germ  Ivan  cultivated.  Peter 
forced  it  into  a  fruit  rotten  before  it  was  ripe. 
In  a  marvel  of  canning,  Catherine  brandied  it. 
The  rottenness  remained.  But  the  policy, 
which  persisted,  transformed  a  private  park  into 
an  empire  wider  than  the  moon.  It  extended 
Russia  from  polar  auroras  to  tropic  blooms.  It 
led  the  Bear  through  the  Chinashop  to  the  fangs 
of  Japan.  The  rottenness,  obvious  there,  threw 
her  into  convulsions  and  the  delirium  that  en- 
sued.    Then  again  night  closed  on  her. 

Prior  to  Ivan  there  had  been  night  only.     It 


8  The  Imperial  Orgy 

was  he  who  pronounced  the  Fiat  lux.  Day 
dawned,  a  day  blood-red  which  Torquemada 
looking  on,  or  rather  up,  from  his  scarlet  seat  at 
Satan's  left,  must  have  envied,  and  which  Domi- 
tian,  from  his  sombrer  couch  at  Pluto's  right, 
may  have  regretted.  Ivan,  more  sinister  than 
either,  more  fiendish  than  both,  was  unexceeded 
in  horror  even  by  the  khans. 

During  their  dominion,  Russia,  shamming 
death,  lay  prostrate.  Ivan  raised  her,  not  very 
much  but  still  a  little  and  left  her  on  her  knees. 
For  centuries  that  was  her  attitude.  That  she 
might  maintain  it  the  more  devoutly  there  were 
tall  gibbets  and  hot  vats.  These  things  insure 
fealty.  To  heighten  it,  to  make  it  instinctive, 
Ivan  instilled  awe. 

In  the  Golden  Horde,  when  the  Khan  of 
khans  had  dined,  a  herald  announced  that  minor 
khans  could  eat.  It  was  very  gracious.  The 
graciousness  proceeded  from  a  theory,  which 
Genghiz  Khan  made  a  fact,  that  there  is  one  sun 
— one — above,  and  one  emperor — one — on  earth. 
The  rest  of  the  world  was  offal.  With  minor 
variations,  the  Assyrian  satraps,  the  pharaohs, 
the  Caesars,  preluded  Genghiz  in  that  aria.  It 
caught  Ivan's  ear,  suited  his  voice.  Absolutism 
with  theocracy  for  leading  motif  and  Tatar  tom- 
toms for  accompaniment  was  the  way  he  ren- 


Ivan  the  Terrible  9 

dered  it.  The  aria  had  echoes  and,  the  tomtoms 
aiding,  so  loud  were  they  that  yesterday,  or  the 
day  before,  you  could  have  heard  them. 
Through  the  centuries  they  reverberated  from 
the  first  tsar  to  the  last. 

Ivan  who  had  taken  everything  else,  took  the 
tomtoms  and  with  them  the  tomtom  players,  the 
trained  musicians  of  the  Golden  Horde  who,  in 
Slavonic,  became  opritchniki  which,  being 
translated,  means  assassins.  At  a  gesture  from 
Ivan,  they  cut  your  head  off.  Convenient  for 
him,  they  were  quite  as  convenient  for  his  suc- 
cessors. In  descending  the  centuries  their  name 
changed,  but  not  their  functions.  Yesterday  or 
the  day  before,  they  were  known  as  the  red 
guards.  Instituted  by  the  first  tsar,  they  elimin- 
ated the  last.  They  were  certainly  very  service- 
able. 

The  Descartian  Cogito  ergo  sum  had  not  then 
been  formulated.  Before  it  could  be,  Ivan 
reversed  it.  Cogitate  and  you  no  longer  were. 
The  aria  with  its  tomtom  accompaniments  regu- 
lated not  only  actions  but  thoughts.  To  cogitate 
was  not  permitted.  Even  if  it  had  been,  no  one 
dreamed  of  such  a  thing.  Apart  from  that,  re- 
strictions were  few.  Obedience  only  was  ex- 
acted and  everything  else  forbidden.  These 
measures,  eminently  considerate,  were  equally 


lo  The  Imperial  Orgy 

benevolent.  Personal  notions  were  sacrilegious 
and  sacrilege,  as  everybody  knows,  is  punishable 
not  in  this  world  merely,  but  in  the  next.  Tor- 
tured here  while  you  lived,  hereafter  you  were 
tortured  forever. 

A  very  beautiful  idea,  it  had  perhaps  its  de- 
fects. It  put  a  premium  on  imbecility.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  created  awe.  Imbecility  is  suffi- 
ciently common.  Awe  is  more  rare.  Without 
it  absolutism  could  not  have  endured.  Yet  such 
are  the  abysses  of  human  stupidity  that  wretches 
whom  Ivan  was  torturing  shrieked  in  their 
agony,  "God  save  the  tsar!" 

At  tsaral  command,  millions  have  vacated  the 
planet.  Why?  They  did  not  know.  They 
omitted  even  to  ask.  Batushka — the  Little 
Father —  had  so  ordered.  That  sufficed. 
These  people  were  not  very  intelligent.  Per- 
haps Ivan  was  not  either. 

Karamsin  says  that  he  was  intelligent.  He 
says  also  that  he  was  best  read  man  in  the  realm. 
That  may  be  true  and  mean  nothing.  Barring 
the  Bible  and  a  few  histories  quite  as  reliable, 
there  was  nothing  to  read.  Ivan  read  the  Bible. 
The  hyena  was  devout.  Religion  led  him  from 
massacres  to  mass  and  back  again. 

Bluebeard  and  Caracalla  combined,  he  had 
seven  wives  of  whom  he  only  killed  three.     He 


Ivan  the  Terrible  1 1 

tickled  a  child.  The  child  laughed.  He  ran 
a  knife  down  its  throat.  A  boiar,  not  seeing  him 
approach,  omitted  to  grovel.  To  improve  his 
sight  his  legs  were  broken.  Another  noble — 
But  these  are  minor  matters.  Generally,  the 
lackeys  of  history  ignore  them.  Perhaps  they 
were  due  to  nervousness.  Ivan  was  born  in  a 
storm  which,  it  may  be,  predisposes  to  neurosis. 
But  also  he  was  born  with  a  sceptre  in  his  mouth. 
He  was  fourteen  before  he  knew  how  to  use  it. 
At  that  age,  a  boiar  displeased  him.  He  had 
him  thrown  to  the  wolves,  eaten  alive.  He  was 
training  then  for  the  throne  of  Moscow. 

In  recent  years,  Moscow  was  a  manufactur- 
ing town.  Its  specialty  was  silk.  In  Ivan's 
day  its  specialty  was  death.  In  the  nineteenth 
century,  there  were  high  hats,  yellow  gloves, 
women's  laughter,  the  tinkle  of  the  balalaika  and 
gypsies  singing  in  the  streets.  In  the  sixteenth 
century,  Moscow  was  dumb.  Belfries  tolled, 
the  tocsin  sounded.  Apart  from  that  there  was 
silence. 

From  afar  it  enchanted.  It  seemed  a  city  of 
sylphs  in  a  land  of  chimeras.  Nearer,  it  fright- 
ened. From  afar  it  projected  the  glitter  of 
glass,  the  sheen  of  enamel,  the  glow  of  mother- 
of-pearl,  a  crystallisation  of  spangles,  ochre, 
azure,  pink.     Fairylike  from  afar,  within  was 


12  The  Imperial  Orgy 

a  conjury  of  constructions  without  a  name  and 
without  example.  The  architecture  was  not 
Tatar,  it  was  not  Lower  Empire,  it  was  not 
Gothic.  The  renaissance  had  not  come  there. 
Greece  was  absent.  Neither  oriental  or  classic, 
it  was  tsaral.  Around  it  circled  rampants,  white 
and  pale  rose.  Without  was  Moscow,  Russia's 
Mekka.  Within  was  the  Kreml,  Moscow's 
heart. 

Ivan  was  the  ideal  tyrant.  The  Kreml  was  a 
tyrant's  ideal,  a  city  of  assassins  that  looked  on 
a  city  of  victims.  Fortress,  abattoir,  seraglio, 
acropolis  and  necropolis  in  one,  for  a  heart  it 
was  infernal. 

Ivan  was  born  there,  lived  there,  died  there, 
haunts  it  still.  It  was  not  his  work,  it  was  his 
portrait.  With  curious  foresight  it  was  built 
by  Ivan's  grandfather  in  Ivan's  image.  The 
architects  were  Italian.  There  were  Italian 
architects  everywhere.  Nowhere,  in  no  place, 
at  any  time,  has  Italian  art  created  anything  in 
any  way  similar.  Like  Ivan  it  was  and  remained 
unique.  A  charnel  house  may  be  grandiose,  it 
cannot  be  sublime.  The  Kreml  never  allured. 
It  did  better.  It  alarmed.  At  the  time,  Mos- 
cow was  the  frontier  of  Europe,  a  barrier  against 
the   East.     The   Kreml  menaced  both.     In  its 


IV  \\  THE  TERRIBLE 


Ivan  the  Terrible  13 

turrets  spectres  watched,  watch  still  perhaps. 
Like  Ivan,  it  was  inhuman. 

Without  the  Kreml,  at  a  turning  to  the  left,  is 
the  Red  Square.  In  the  square  is  the  Church 
of  Vassili  Blagennoi.  The  name  of  the  archi- 
tect is  forgotten,  but  not  his  fate.  To  prevent 
him  from  elsewhere  erecting  a  duplicate,  Ivan 
tore  his  eyes  out. 

To-day  it  suggests  a  corner  of  some  universe 
other  than  ours.  But  the  immediate  impression 
is  one  of  emancipation.  You  feel  that  the  archi- 
tect was  freed  from  the  pale  camisoles  of  what 
is  correct.  Critics  have  called  him  mad.  Per- 
haps he  was.  It  is  only  the  mad  who  are  deliv- 
ered from  the  commonplace. 

Here  the  deliverance  is  expressed  in  a  solidi- 
fied mirage  that  resembles  a  dragon  and  a  pea- 
cock topped  by  flowers  on  fire,  by  painted  icicles, 
by  strawberries  gigantic  and  glowing,  by  roses 
and  rainbows  that  bewilder,  delight,  dismay. 
The  effect,  vividly  abnormal,  is  that  of  an  hallu- 
cination. It  is  a  House  of  God  perhaps,  but  of 
God  as  men  may  have  known  Him  in  Atlantis, 
when  faith  was  nearer  to  nature  than  the  divine. 
Primarily  an  evocation,  it  remains  a  marvel. 
Ivan's  treatment  of  the  architect  has  therefore 
an  excuse,  or  at  least  Gautier  found  one  for 


14  The  Imperial  Orgy 

him: — "In  matters  of  art,  ferocity  is  preferable 
to  indifference." 

Behind  the  ferocity  is  a  story  that  may  be  un- 
true but  which  Karamsin  recites.  During  the 
siege  of  Kasan,  Tatar  sorcerers  stood  on  the  walls 
and  with  lifted  robes  vomited  spells  and  insults 
at  Ivan  who,  Cross  in  hand,  outfaced  them.  In 
commemoration  of  the  strategy,  and  of  the  vic- 
tory that  ensued,  the  Church  of  Vassili  the  Beat- 
ified was  erected. 

Ivan  took  Kasan  from  the  Tatars  as  Ferdi- 
nand took  Granada  from  the  Moors.  That  re- 
covery enthralled  Castille.  The  recovery  of 
Kasan  enraptured  Muscovy.  It  threw  back  the 
Golden  Horde.  It  started  the  debacle  of  the 
khans.  After  Kasan,  Astrakhan  and,  with  the 
latter,  the  Caspian. 

These  feats  are  notable.  So,  too,  at  the  time, 
was  Ivan.  He  was  devout.  He  was  brave. 
He  was  handsome.  Terrible  he  was  also,  but 
only  on  the  field.  Presently  his  character 
changed,  his  appearance  altered.  Where  the 
Christian  had  been  came  the  saurian.  From 
handsome  he  grew  hideous.  A  hyena  replaced 
the  hero. 

Perhaps  a  man's  courage  is  in  proportion  to 
his  humanity.  Probably  if  the  latter  diminishes 
so  does  the  former.     It  may  be  that  psychologi- 


Ivan  the  Terrible  15 

cal  variations  alter  the  lines  of  the  face.  As  a 
lad,  Nero  was  charming.  The  epileptically 
obscene  changed  him  into  a  cringing  beast. 
That  and  other  influences  affected  Ivan.  Best- 
ial and  remorseless  at  home,  to  foreign  insults 
he  bowed.     He  did  worse,  if  worse  can  be. 

There  was  Kasan.  He  offered  to  return  it. 
There  was  Livonia.  He  gave  it  back.  Livonia 
was  the  gate  to  Europe.  Muscovy  had  fought 
for  it  with  the  Poles,  with  the  Swedes,  with  the 
Livonians  themselves.  Muscovy  had  won  it. 
Ivan  owned  it.  It  was  his,  with  an  insult  for 
crown. 

He  had  asked  the  Polish  king  for  his  sister  in 
marriage.  The  answer  he  received  was  a  white 
mare  tricked  out  like  a  woman.  The  envoi  was 
the  king's  expression  of  his  supreme  contempt. 
Ivan  swallowed  it.  Subsequently,  with  a  rela- 
tively innumerable  army,  with  a  relatively  inex- 
haustible treasure,  he  surrendered  Livonia,  not 
at  the  point  of  the  sword,  but  with  a  scratch  of 
the  pen.  The  bloodiest  of  sovereigns,  who 
killed  an  elephant  because  it  did  not  kneel  at  his 
bidding,  had  grown  afraid  of  a  man. 

The  result  is  curious.  Ivan  had  seven  wives 
whom  he  successively  ignored,  repudiated  or 
killed.  By  the  seventh  he  had  a  son,  Dmitri, 
who  lives  in  drama  to-day.     By  the  third  he  had 


i6  The  Imperial  Orgy 

a  son,  Fedor,  who  has  survived  in  an  opera.  By 
the  first  there  had  been  born  to  him  the  tsare- 
vitch,  a  lad  that  he  was  training  in  crime  and 
debauchery  to  reign  when  he  had  gone. 

After  the  surrender  of  Livonia,  the  tsarevitch 
asked  leave  to  go  and  fight  the  Poles.  The  re- 
quest was  innocently  made;  that  is,  if  anything 
could  be  innocent  in  a  hyena's  whelp.  But 
Ivan,  construing  the  request  as  a  criticism,  raised 
a  cudgel  and  struck  him  dead.  Then,  crocodil- 
ianly,  the  hyena  wept. 

Ivan  exceeded  Torquemada.  He  exceeded 
Tartuffe.  Without  any  intention  to  abdicate,  he 
announced  that  he  would.  It  may  be  doubted 
that  the  martyrs  loved  their  Roman  butchers  or 
that  the  Caesars  were  affectioned  by  the  saints. 
But  Muscovy,  to  whom  servility  was  a  religion 
and,  psychologically,  a  very  interesting  religion, 
beat  her  battered  head  against  the  throne.  With 
tears  and  lifted  .hands  she  prayed  that  he  would 
deign  to  continue  to  rule.  To  him,  to  rule  was 
to  kill  and  justified  by  the  national  genuflections, 
murder  became  not  merely  a  joy  but  a  duty,  one 
that  he  so  punctiliously  fulfilled  that,  when  he 
died,  the  desolation  experienced  was  curious  and 
even  biblical. 

Historically  the  desolation  was  profund,  yet, 
unless  any  present  conjecture  is  hopeless,  it  must 


Ivan  the  Terrible  17 

have  been  less  pronounced  than  the  desolation 
which  Ivan  himself  effected.  In  spite  of  his 
ultimate  attitude  to  Poland,  previously  he  had 
been  terrific. 

Poland  at  the  time,  predominant  in  the  north, 
had  for  emblem  the  sun.  Other  tsars  attended 
to  that.  They  put  it  out.  Ivan  attended  to 
Novgorod  who  had  been  stretching  a  hand  to 
its  rays.  The  attention  involved,  first  the 
destruction  of  the  surrounding  country.  For 
years  it  was  bare.  Famine  stalked  there  and  on 
the  heels  of  famine,  plague.  Already  Ivan  had 
attended  to  the  inhabitants. 

Every  day  for  a  month,  thousands  were  dis- 
patched. Some  were  ordered  to  scaffolds,  to 
cauldrons,  to  the  river,  where  they  were  thrown 
wholesale.  Some  were  hacked  to  pieces. 
Others  were  first  hacked  and  then  boiled.  In 
the  river,  children  were  tied  to  their  mothers. 
Guards,  armed  with  pikes  rowed  among  them, 
shoved  them  down.  The  guards  and  execution- 
ers wearied;  Ivan  never. 

Occasionally  he  prayed.  This  was  his  prayer: 
"Remember,  Lord,  the  souls  of  Thy  servants, 
inhabitants  of  this  town,  whose  names  Thou 
knowest." 

Incidentally  he  kept  tally.  One  of  the  lists 
gives  three  thousand  four  hundred  and  seventy 


18  The  Imperial  Orgy 

"whose  names  Thou  knowest."  On  other  lists, 
names  that  he  had  learned  are  itemised  "with  his 
wife,"  "with  his  wife  and  children,"  "with  his 
sons  and  daughters." 

The  prayers  at  an  end,  the  lists  completed  and 
filed,  Ivan  returned  to  Moscow  where,  in  the 
Red  Square,  at  the  east  wall  of  the  Kreml,  other 
traitors  "whose  names  Thou  knowest"  waited. 

Here  were  more  cauldrons,  more  gibbets; 
saws  that  cut  you  in  two;  pincers  that  pulled  your 
tongue  out;  machines  that  slipped  you,  like  an 
eel,  from  your  skin.  Then  as,  leisurely,  the  first 
tortures  began,  Ivan,  foaming  like  a  horse, 
called  at  the  tortured: — 

"I  am  your  god!" 

Very  consoling  and  equally  true.  To  a 
people  dumb  and  driven,  he  was  a  god,  jealous 
perhaps,  perhaps  also  severe,  but  so  wholly 
divine  that  after  the  Novgorod  ceremonies,  am- 
bassadors who  passed  that  way  found  the  Volga 
dammed  by  the  corpses  that  the  god  had  left. 

For  these  envoys  other,  things  were  in  store, 
the  surprise  of  discovering  a  new  realm,  a  land 
that  stretched  .between  Europe  and  Asia,  a  mon- 
archy whose  sovereign  was  more  formidable 
than  the  khans.  It  amazed  them,  as  the  unim- 
agined  always  does  amaze.  But  a  detail  sur- 
prised.    In  the  faraway  burgs  and  keeps  from 


Ivan  the  Terrible  19 

which  they  had  come,  they  were  clearly  entitled 
to  whatever  was  not  taken  away  from  them.  In 
Russia,  matters  were  ordered  differently.  There 
the  ruler,  after  taking  everything  else,  put  the 
iron  hand  of  absolutism  on  whatever  his  subjects 
possessed.  Privileges  and  property,  all  were 
his,  in  fee-simple.  Their  right  to  breathe  was 
subject  to  the  caprice  of  a  despot  who  had  taken 
septentrional  sables  and  bicephalous  eagles  for 
device  and  who  called  himself  tsar. 

The  sables  were  indigenous,  the  eagles  Byzan- 
tine, but  the  title  tsar,  a  word  that  means  power, 
originated  in  Assyria  where  it  became  the  ter- 
minology of  kings,  notably  of  Nabonassar, 
Nebuchadnezzar,  Belshazzar.  Muscovy,  find- 
ing the  title  in  the  Slavonian  translation  of  the 
Bible,  gave  it  to  the  khans.  It  was  from  them 
that  Ivan  took  it.  Antecedent  rulers  had  been 
grand  princes,  grand-dukes.  In  assuming  the 
higher  title,  Ivan  glorified  the  realm. 

In  the  Kreml,  where  he  held  court,  it  would 
have  been  interesting  to  have  seen  him.  On  a 
throne  of  gold,  that  was  set  with  two  thousand 
diamonds — a  present  from  a  brother  reptile,  the 
Shah — a  diadem  on  his  hideous  head,  in  one 
bloody  hand  he  held  the  orb,  symbol  of  sover- 
eignty; in  the  other,  the  sceptre,  symbol  of 
power. 


20  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Horsey,  an  English  tourist,  who  visited  him 
and  who  was  perhaps  imaginative,  says  that  the 
sceptre,  three  feet  long,  was  a  whale's  tooth 
crusted  with  jewels,  and  that  the  robe  he  wore 
was  so  laden  with  other  jewels  that  he  could  not 
move. 

In  that  regalia,  Ivan,  hyena  though  he  were, 
must  have  resembled  Arpocrates,  god  of  silence. 
About  him,  in  kaftans  of  white  satin,  boiars 
stood,  armed  with  silver  hatchets.  They  did  not 
speak.  No  one  spoke.  There  was  not  a  sound, 
not  a  whisper,  not  a  movement.  One  would  have 
thought  the  court  bewitched.  In  the  witchery 
of  it,  in  that  silence,  on  that  throne,  Ivan  pre- 
sented the  spectacle — by  no  means  commonplace 
— of  absolute  might.  Presently  he  gestured,  the 
court  awoke  and  ambassadors  and  tourists  ap- 
proached the  monster,  who  already  divine,  had 
taken  on  other  aspects  of  divinity. 

After  the  manner  of  Tlaloc,  the  lizard-faced 
god  of  the  Aztecs,  he  made  the  rain  and  the  fine 
weather.  Those  about  him  had  nothing  what- 
ever, and  very  naturally  since  he  had  all.  Con- 
sequently, on  state  occasions,  he  rained  sunshine 
on  them.  Guards,  nobles,  the  rest  of  the  court, 
were  given  silks,  satin,  velvet,  gems.  The  func- 
tion at  an  end,  the  lizard-hyena  saw  to  it  that 
garments  and  jewels  were  returned. 


Ivan  the  Terrible  21 

That  custom,  which  he  originated,  was  after- 
ward abrogated,  but  the  theory  of  it,  the  theory 
that  from  the  tsar  everything  emanated,  that  he 
alone  was,  that  no  one  else  is  anybody,  persisted 
and  so  sovereignly  that  patriotism  became 
treason. 

Treason  at  this  time  was  not  in  the  code,  it 
was  in  the  index.  Patriotism  was  fealty  and 
fealty  religion.  To  the  Russian,  in  his  Greek 
Church,  the  tsar,  the  nation  and  the  Almighty 
were  entities  barely  differentiable.  That  idea, 
lunatic  certainly,  but  an  article  of  faith,  endured 
and  in  enduring  inspired,  as  it  was  intended  to 
inspire,  such  awe  that,  until  within  relatively 
recent  years,  Russians  got  from  their  convey- 
ances and  threw  themselves  in  the  mud,  in  the 
snow,  before  a  tsar  as  he  passed. 

Through  a  beautiful  subversion  of  this  idea, 
prelates  in  announcing  Ivan's  death,  proclaimed 
that  he  had  become  an  angel.  At  the  death- 
notice  Muscovy  really  grieved.  That  in  itself 
partakes  of  the  marvellous.  What  perhaps  is 
more  marvellous  still  is  that  with  the  grief  aston- 
ishment mingled.  An  angel!  It  was  unac- 
countable and  not  at  all  because  of  his  fiendish- 
ness  but  because  of  local  servility.  An  angel! 
Could  he  not  have  done  better?     Without  effort 


22  The   Imperial  Orgy- 

it  had  been  assumed  that  when  he  deigned  to  die 
he  would  be  translated  to  the  zenith  ineffable. 

Balzac  said  that  it  is  not  possible  to  conceive 
of  an  ugly  angel.  Perhaps  he  forgot  Ivan  who, 
just  prior  to  his  assumption,  contrived  to  sully 
even  the  Kreml.  Between  those  lines  there  is 
drama.  Karamsin  supplied  the  details.  From 
them  Alexis  Tolstoi  wrote  a  play: — The  Death 
of  Ivan  the  Terrible. 

The  mise  en  scene  is  a  horrible  room  in  the 
palace  of  horrors.  In  that  vomitory  of  crime, 
Ivan,  stretched  on  a  bed  of  zibelines,  was  mo- 
mentarily alone.  Boris  Godounov,  a  wolfman, 
had  just  left  him. 

Without,  guarded  by  keepers,  were  men  in 
peaked  bonnets  and  the  long,  starred  robes  of 
Babylon. 

It  was  adjacently  that  Ivan  lay,  but  not  quite 
alone.  Death  that  tore  tiaras  from  popes  and 
sceptres  from  kings,  reducing  them  all  to  the 
great  proletariat  of  eternity,  was  there  also. 
The  men  in  starred  robes  had  foretold  it.  Un- 
known to  them,  unknown,  too,  to  Ivan,  the 
wolfman  had  invited  it. 

A  little  before,  from  the  red  stairway  of  the 
red  palace,  Ivan  had  seen  a  comet.  Was  it  a 
presage  of  his  passing,  he  wondered?  That  he 
might  know,  he  had  summoned  magicians,  as- 


Ivan  the  Terrible  23 

sembled  astrologers,  promising  that  if  they  lied 
he  would  kill  them. 

At  the  moment,  to  minister  to  Ivan,  timidly, 
atiptoe,  the  wife  of  his  son  Fedor  entered  and 
fled  aghast  at  his  instant  and  monstrous  lubric- 
ity. 

Ivan  laughed.  Death?  He  had  shamed  it 
from  him.  Laughing  still,  he  clapped.  A 
page  appeared.  Ivan  ordered.  The  soothsay- 
ers and  their  guards  filed  in. 

Ivan,  indicating  the  wizards,  told  the  guards 
to  take  them  out,  take  them  away  and  burn  them 
alive.  They  had  lied.  They  had  said  he  was 
to  die  that  day.     Make  a  bonfire  of  them! 

Ivan  turned,  turned  again.  "Wait!  The  day 
is  not  done.  Hold  them  until  night.  Then, 
the  stake! 

"Here!"  he  called  at  approaching  pages. 
"Lead  me  to  my  treasure-hall." 

That  hall  was  floored  with  agate,  roofed  with 
gold.  In  it,  jewels  were  heaped.  There  were 
bags  of  emeralds,  bags  of  rubies,  bags  of  pearls. 
There  were  crowns  there,  the  crown  of  Muscovy, 
the  crown  of  Kasan,  the  crown  of  Kiptchak,  the 
crown  of  Siberia,  the  crown  of  Astrakhan, 
crowns  on  crowns,  diamonds  on  gold,  dust  on 
blood.  There  were  great  silver  bins  piled  one 
on  top  of  the  other,  each  replete  with  coin,  with 


24  The  Imperial  Orgy 

the  sack  of  cities,  with  the  spoil  of  provinces, 
with  the  riches  of  realms,  with  spectres,  with 
tears. 

With  widening  eyes,  the  miser-satyr  stared. 
The  hall  had  faded,  the  crowns  had  vanished, 
the  glare  had  gone.  There  was  nothing,  blood 
only  and  mists  of  murdered  men. 

He  wavered,  staggered,  fell.  From  out  the 
mist  death  had  leaped. 

Ivan  the  Angel  was  winging  his  way  on  high. 

A  table  remained.  It  was  set.  On  it  were 
chalices  of  power,  flagons  of  grandeur,  cups  of 
mud  and  blood.  The  wine  was  there,  the  feast 
prepared.     The  imperial  orgy  had  begun. 


II 

DMITRI  THE  SORCERER 

GREECE  had  many  shrines.  There  was 
one  to  every  divinity.  There  was  one 
to  the  unknown  god.  In  Rome  there 
were  altars  to  every  sin,  except  the  sins  unknown. 
Unknown  sins  were  unimaginable.  Two,  that 
have  become  known  since  then,  are  indescribable. 
To-day,  in  words  masked  to  the  teeth,  one  is 
called  cloacism;  the  other,  masochism.  In- 
vented by  the  Tatars  for  the  relaxation  of  ba- 
trachians  and  ghouls,  afterward  they  were  for- 
gotten until,  in  Flanders  and  Champagne,  they 
were  revived  by  the  Huns. 

Ivan  adopted  them,  took  to  them  naturally, 
took  to  religion  also.  Ferocious  felons  are  often 
devout.  In  the  cathedrals  of  contemporaneous 
Spain,  highwaymen  sharpen  their  daggers  while 
saying  their  prayers.  From  saurian  abysses 
Ivan  passed  to  the  cloister.  There  he  prostrated 
himself,  protested  his  abasement,  after  which  he 
returned  to  it. 

During   one    of    his    religious    crises,    a    son, 

25 


26  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Fedor,  was  conceived.  He  had  another  son,  the 
lad  whom  he  killed,  and  still  another,  Dmitri 
who  was  also  killed,  killed  twice,  killed  three 
times,  killed  oftener  perhaps,  but  who,  in  each 
instance,  came  to  life  again. 

Russian  history  is  packed  with  drama.  In 
point  of  time,  in  point,  too,  of  surprise,  the 
Dmitri  drama  leads.  Schiller  attempted  it, 
Goethe  considered  it,  Soumarokov  wrote  it.  It 
will  be  told  in  a  moment.  The  story  of  Fedor 
comes  first.  Brief  and  unusual,  it  is  like  the  tale 
of  the  Persian  king  who,  invisible  to  his  subjects, 
occupied  himself  with  beautiful  things. 

Before  Ivan  became  an  angel,  he  instituted  a 
pentarchy,  a  council  of  five — five  boiars — nom- 
inally a  ministry  of  affairs  domestic  and  foreign, 
but  whose  actual  ministry  was  limited  to  varia- 
tions on  the  Byzantine  formula: — "May  I  speak 
and  live?"  Among  the  five  was  Boris  God- 
ounov,  whose  sister  Fedor  had  married.  Ivan 
gone,  the  pentarchy  led  Fedor  to  the  feast,  seated 
him  there,  set  the  chalices  before  him. 

A  dilettante  in  delicate  emotions,  the  food  was 
too  rich,  the  wine  too  strong.  Beyond  were  Per- 
sian tapestries.  Abandoning  the  orgy  to  Boris, 
he  retired  behind  them  and  thereafter  occupied 
himself  in  going  to  mass  and  avoiding  his  wife. 

The  charm  of  missals — missals  that  pictured 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  27 

the  twelve  perils  of  hell — the  ecstasy  apprehen- 
sible in  devotion,  the  harmony  of  grave  hymns, 
the  glow  of  ikons,  these  things  appealed  to  him 
in  ways  which  blood  and  mud  never  could. 
With  fine  levity,  history  has  called  him  chaste. 
At  least  he  was  neither  sensual  nor  drunken,  ab- 
stentions very  remarkable  in  those  days  and  par- 
ticularly in  a  son  of  Ivan.  Fedor  resembled  his 
father  as  a  fawn  resembles  a  boa-constrictor. 
The  table  with  its  high  festoons  failed  to  detain 
him.  But,  an  artist,  he  embellished  Moscow. 
He  gave  it  an  avenue  on  which,  in  lieu  of  the 
pine  isbas  of  Ivan's  day,  there  were  palaces,  un- 
comfortable, unsanitary,  but  of  stone,  and  more 
churches — already  there  were  five  hundred — 
and  among  them  one  in  particular,  a  little  gem, 
that  held  just  seven  souls. 

On  the  palace  walls  he  hung  paintings  that 
displayed  the  leading  chapters  of  Russian  his- 
tory, the  main  events  of  the  Bible.  In  the  mid- 
dle rotunda,  from  which  a  red  stairway  led,  he 
put  mosaics  of  saints  and  seraphs  and,  behind  a 
screen  of  jewels,  the  Madonna.  Above,  in  the 
centre  of  the  arched  roof,  he  added  a  sculptured 
lion  holding  in  its  teeth  a  twisted  serpent  from 
which  the  tsaral  eagles  swung.  Beneath  was  the 
throne  which  he  supplemented  with  the  four 
monsters   of   the   Apocalypse.     These   were   of 


28  The  Imperial  Orgy 

gold,  the  throne  was  gold,  the  walls  were  gold 
and  about  them  he  put  gold  and  silver  vases, 
some  in  the  form  of  licornes  and  stags,  others  in 
the  form  of  swans  and  peacocks  and  all  so  mas- 
sive that,  Karamsin  says,  it  took  a  dozen  men  to 
move  one  of  them. 

These  decorations  effected,  Fedor  became  a 
Persian  king.  It  fatigued  him  to  rule.  From 
despotism  he  shrank.  No  tsar  has  been  more 
the  artist  and  less  the  autocrat  than  he.  But  no 
tsar  has  been  artist  at  all — except  in  the  divine 
business  of  ordering  people  off  the  earth.  In 
that,  each  of  the  litter  was  hors  concours. 
Fedor,  with  no  criminal  tendencies,  with  no 
orgiac  tastes,  effaced  himself,  abandoning  Mus- 
covy to  a  wolf. 

Beauvois  de  Chauvincourt  wrote  learnedly  on 
lycanthropy,  concerning  which  it  used  to  be 
heretical  to  disbelieve.  Boris  Godounov  pre- 
sented a  prefectly  defined  case.  A  magnificent 
brute,  Tatar  on  the  distaff  side,  he  looked  the 
wolf,  lived  the  wolf  and  made  others  die  of  that 
wolfishness.  In  the  orgy  that  Ivan  initiated, 
raveningly  he  had  assisted.  Very  close  to  Ivan 
and  always  edging  closer,  finally  he  closed  in  on 
him.  Ivan's  abrupt  ascension  was  caused  by  a 
poisoned  brew  which  the  wolf  cooked  and  served 
him.     The    brew    brought    him    close    to    the 


BORIS  GODUNOV 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  29 

throne,  to  which  he  got  closer,  still  closer,  until 
he  hugged  it. 

To-day,  in  operatic  circles,  his  basso  howl 
resounds.  Moussorgski  did  reasonably  well  by 
him,  though  less  happily  perhaps  than  Glinka 
did  with  Mikhail  Romanov,  the  insignificant 
insect  around  whom  he  composed  A  Life  for  the 
Tsar.  One  may  regret  that  instead  of  that  insect 
he  did  not  take  Fedor.  The  regret  is  idle.  It 
was  Fedor's  destiny  to  live  less  in  scores  than  in 
sanctity,  a  sancity,  parenthetically,  which  Dmi- 
tri, his  thoroughly  demoniac  brother,  exceeded. 

Dmitri,  then  a  boy  of  seven,  was  a  little  savage, 
a  trifle  malformed.  One  of  his  arms  was  longer 
than  the  other.  With  his  mother,  he  lived  ob- 
scurely and  afar  at  Ouglitch  where  he  tortured 
kittens  and  puppies  and  made  models  in  snow  of 
the  chief  boiars  whose  heads  he  chopped  off. 
The  story  of  these  traits,  very  promising, 
thoroughly  Ivanesque,  was  probably  invented. 
But  Fedor  was  childless ;  also  he  was  frail.  The 
little  savage  was  next  in  line.  Boris  licked  his 
chops  at  both.     One  at  a  time. 

Presently  the  little  savage  was  murdered,  or 
so  it  was  reported.  In  those  days  murder  was 
common  and  not  at  all  criminal.  But  a  tsare- 
vitch  was  holy.  His  assassination  was  sacrilege. 
rmmediately     the     obituary     was     corrected. 


30  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Dmitri  had  not  been  murdered.  He  had  killed 
himself,  accidentally,  while  at  play,  during 
which,  knife  in  hand,  he  had  a  fit  of  epilepsy  and 
the  knife  had  cut  his  throat.  The  story  may  not 
be  true,  but  at  any  rate  he  was  dead,  though  how 
he  died  witnesses  differed.  That  was  very  in- 
judicious of  them.  The  official  version  must 
prevail.  Dmitri's  mother  was  sent  to  a  convent, 
other  witnesses  to  their  graves.  Ouglitch  was 
razed,  the  inhabitants  exterminated.  During  the 
massacre,  a  bell  tolled.  What  business  had  it 
to  do  that?  Karamsin  says  that  Boris  exiled  it, 
shipped  it  to  Siberia.     Excellent  measure. 

Dmitri  then  was  thoroughly  dead.  Years 
later  to  make  him  deader,  if  that  were  possible, 
he  was  beatified  and  made  a  saint.  In  the  Greek 
Church,  to  which  orthodox  Russia  adhered,  can- 
onisation was  less  arduous  than  at  Rome.  The 
proponent's  tomb  was  opened.  If  the  body  had 
not  decomposed  that  miracle  attested  his  sanct- 
ity. But  a  bone  is  part  of  the  body;  at  a  pinch, 
so,  too,  is  a  lock  of  hair.  Given  but  these  and 
the  miracle  subsisted.  They  sufficed  for  the 
young  savage.  Moreover,  when  his  tomb  was 
opened,  a  perfume,  rarely  delicious,  issued  from 
it.  That  in  itself  was  enough,  yet  there  was 
more.  His  remains,  a  bone  and  a  hank  of  hair 
worked  the  usual  wonders,  effected  the  usual 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  31 

cures.  In  the  same  measure  that  Dmitri's  death 
was  beyond  doubt,  so  also  was  his  sanctity. 

All  this  was  years  later.  Fedor  meanwhile 
had  joined  his  angelic  father.  Boris  remained. 
His  sister  blessed  him;  the  boiars  knelt  to  him. 
A  wolf  was  tsar. 

In  his  lair  was  a  daughter,  Xenia.  Her  eye- 
brows met,  a  mark  of  beauty  then  greatly  ad- 
mired and  which  when  lacking  was  produced 
with  a  crayon.  Baer,  a  Lutheran  clergyman 
who  was  in  Moscow  at  the  time  and  who  left  a 
little  bloody  history  of  it,  said  that  she  seemed 
moulded  in  cream  and  spoke  more  elegantly 
than  a  book. 

The  rumour  of  these  charms  allured  the 
Prince  of  Denmark  to  Moscow,  where,  although 
he  was  a  foreigner,  consequently  a  heretic  and 
hated  as  such,  Boris  so  feasted  him  that  he  died. 
It  was  said  that  he  had  been  poisoned.  Prob- 
ably that  was  untrue,  but  thereafter  other  princes 
fought  shy  of  this  beauty  for  whom  fate  had  in 
store  a  role  which,  on  another  stage,  Louise  de 
la  Vallicre  immortalised. 

Incidentally  there  were  tortures,  decapita- 
tions, butcheries,  wars  and  sacks.  Boris  God- 
ounov  was  becoming  very  terrible.  There  was 
a    famine    more    terrible    still,    during    which 


3^  The  Imperial  Orgy 

human  flesh  hung  in  the  markets  and  a  mother 
was  seen  eating  her  child. 

With  these  harmonies  for  overture,  the  cur- 
tains parted, on  one  of  the  great  dramas  of  Rus- 
sian history.  At  the  court  of  Sigismond,  king 
of  Poland,  abruptly,  like  a  knight  in  a  ballad, 
the  dead  Dmitri  appeared.  Sardou  never  did 
better. 

Whether  it  were  the  real  Dmitri,  whether  it 
were  an  impostor,  or,  as  was  afterward  said,  a 
sorcerer  that  then  occupied  the  stage,  no  one  now 
can  say  and,  it  may  be  that,  save  the  chief  actors, 
no  one  then  could.  The  tale  that  was  told  was 
that  relatives  at  Ouglitch,  fearful  of  Boris  and 
his  wolfishness,  had  substituted  a  dead  boy  for 
the  tsarevitch  who  was  then  hidden  in  a  monas- 
tery which,  years  later,  he  abandoned  and  after- 
ward joined  the  Cossacks. 

The  Cossacks,  literally  the  Fighters,  were 
hordes  on  horseback  that  had  republics  that  were 
armies,  but  no  chiefs,  except  in  war,  when  they 
elected  a  despot  and  called  him  hetman.  Among 
the  cavalry  republics  was  that  of  the  Cossacks 
of  the  Don.  Dmitri  joined  them  and  declared 
his  rank,  exhibiting,  to  prove  it,  various  tokens; 
in  particular,  a  cross  of  diamonds. 

Diamonds  then  were  not  the  articles  of  com- 
merce that  they  have  since  become.     Inhibited 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  33 

to  the  vulgar,  they  were  reserved  to  the  elect. 
Generally,  there  were  laws  on  the  subject:  what 
is  more  potent,  there  were  terrors.  To  anyone 
not  born  to  the  purple,  the  possession  of  a  dia- 
mond was  malefic.  The  evil  repute  of  that  hill 
of  light,  the  Koh-i-nor,  has  no  other  origin.  A 
belief  in  this  malignancy,  common  among  the 
simple  to-day,  was  potent  then.  Moreover  the 
pretender,  young,  virile,  ugly — ugly  with  that 
ugliness  that  attracts — had  an  air  sovereign  and 
compelling.  He  looked  the  king.  In  addition 
to  the  cross,  his  appearance  may  have  been  con- 
firmatory. In  any  event  it  served  as  passport  to 
the  court  of  Sigismond,  who,  perhaps,  had  issued 
the  passport  himself.  That  is  possible.  It  may 
be  that  the  claimant  was  really  prince,  but  with 
the  bend  sinister,  a  natural  son  of  this  king  who, 
for  reasons  of  his  own,  wanted  him  on  the  throne 
of  Russia. 

Russians  and  Poles  were  like  first  cousins  that 
loathe  each  other.  Mutually  antipathetic,  they 
came  of  the  same  stock.  But  while  the  Poles,  in 
their  relative  freedom,  had  developed  the  Slavic 
grace  and  gallantry,  the  Russians,  under  the 
Tatars,  had  degenerated  into  ignorant  and  super- 
stitious brutes.  Bathory,  the  antecedent  king 
of  Poland,  had  proposed  to  reunite  the  two  na- 
tions.    The  proposition,  advanced  to  Fedor,  was 


34  The  Imperial  Orgy 

rejected  by  Boris,  fearful  for  his  own  regency 
and  the  domination  which  the  superior  civilisa- 
tion might  exert. 

Sigismond,  in  seconding  Dmitri,  may  have 
had  the  same  idea.  But  that  is  conjectural,  as  is 
almost  everything  else  concerning  Dmitri,  except 
that  he  was  a  demon  and,  what  is  far  rarer,  a 
man.  He  may  have  been  Sigismond's  son.  He 
may  have  been  Ivan's.  He  may  have  been 
neither.  Concerning  his  origin  there  are  texts 
by  the  ton,  opinions  all  you  like,  but  a  certainty 
never,  unless  a  mother's  recognition  may  be  so 
regarded.  The  mother  of  Dmitri  Redux  did 
recognise  him  as  her  son,  or  pretended  to,  and 
must  have  pretended,  if  pretend  she  did,  because 
she  was  terrorised  into  it.  Between  those  horns 
of  the  duenna,  the  reader  may  choose.  The  rest 
is  fairy-tale,  very  bloody,  equally  dramatic,  with 
a  coup  de  theatre  for  finale. 

At  Sigismond's  court,  Dmitri  Redivivus  en- 
countered Iouri  Mniszech,  lord  palatin  of  Sen- 
domir,  a  great  noble  as  greatly  in  debt,  who  also 
had  a  daughter,  Maryna,  another  beauty,  prima 
donna  in  the  lyric  drama  that  ensued.  At  first 
sight  the  two  young  people  fell  in  love.  Life  be- 
came fair  as  a  dream.  The  impoverished  father 
sanctioned  the  engagement,  the  subtle  king  of- 
fered an  army.     Both  had  the  throne  in  view: 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  35 

Sigismond  perhaps  for  himself,  Mniszech  cer- 
tainly for  his  daughter.  But  while  it  does  not 
appear  that  the  king  made  any  conditions,  the 
father  demanded  sacks  of  the  Kreml  gold.  To 
get  the  girl,  Dmitri  had  to  get  the  gold  and  to 
get  the  gold  he  had  first  to  get  the  throne.  It 
was  the  old  Hesperidian  story,  told  backward, 
told  in  Slav. 

The  encounterable  difficulties  were  formid- 
able. Boris  had  an  army  to  maintain  him.  But 
here,  as  in  every  fairy-tale,  the  unbelievable 
enters.  Muscovy,  enthralled  by  the  story  of  the 
resurrection  of  her  lawful  lord  and  weary  of 
a  werewolf's  teeth,  rose  to  Dmitri.  The  troops 
refused  to  fight  against  Ivan's  son  and  heir. 
Very  sensibly,  too.  At  Dmitri's  heels  were  long 
vistas  of  Poles  and  Cossacks;  the  former  bril- 
liant, glittering,  yet  frightful  with  the  wings  of 
great  vultures  which  they  wore  on  their  hel- 
mets; the  latter  soberly  and  sombrely  fierce. 

Among  the  Muscovite  troops,  Boris,  by  way 
of  counter-irritant,  circulated  a  quadrille  of 
monks  who  were,  or  who  claimed  to  be,  superiors 
of  the  monastery  where  the  pretender  had  been. 
Violently  they  denounced  him  as  an  impious 
impostor,  a  youth  of  base  origin  whom  again 
and  again  they  had  punished  and  for  what? 
For  sorcery! 


36  The  Imperial  Orgy 

The  accusation,  which  afterward  was  shud- 
deringly  recalled,  Dmitri  traversed.  He  trapped 
the  monks,  put  them  to  the  question.  On  the 
peaks  of  torture  three  of  them  died.  The 
fourth  recanted.  Dragged  before  Dmitri  he  col- 
lapsed, but  he  gasped: — "Behold  the  tsar!"  In 
an  effort  to  get  him  to  his  feet,  those  that  stood 
about  kicked  him.     He  was  dead. 

The  testimony  lacked  conclusiveness.  To  con- 
firm it,  something  else  was  required.  Dmitri's 
mother  was  in  a  convent.  He  invited  her  to 
join  him.  They  met  in  a  tent,  very  sumptuous, 
it  is  said,  that  had  been  erected  for  the  purpose 
at  the  outskirts  of  Moscow.  Within  the  tent, 
concealed  from  all,  for  a  few  moments  they 
remained.  Then,  issuing  from  it,  they  em- 
braced; the  tsaritsa  publicly  acknowledging 
Dmitri  as  her  son.  Afterward,  she  was  said  to 
have  said  that,  while  in  the  tent,  Dmitri  threat- 
ened to  kill  her  if  she  refused.  That  may  or 
may  not  be  true.  But,  at  the  time,  who  could 
doubt  that  he  were  tsar? 

No  one  perhaps,  not  even  Boris,  particularly 
not  Boris.  The  loupgarou  may  not  have  known 
the  truth  about  Dmitri,  but  he  knew  it  then 
about  himself.  In  Beauvois  de  Chauvincourt's 
learned  and  very  reasonable  work  on  lycan- 
thropy,  it  is  stated  that  when  a  werewolf  is  cor- 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  37 

nered  and  cannot  escape,  he  kills  himself.  Boris 
Godounov  drank  poison  and  just  in  time. 
Through  the  holy  gate  of  holy  Moscow,  Dmi- 
tri was  riding.  He  rode  a  white  charger  whose 
legs  and  tail  had  been  dyed  scarlet,  a  pic- 
turesque conceit  intended  to  suggest  that  the 
horse   had   waded   through   blood. 

At  the  entrance,  dignitaries  in  gala  dress 
■tendered  him  a  gold  plate  on  which  were  bread 
and  salt,  the  symbols  of  submission.  Dmitri 
flung  himself  from  that  horse — the  detail  is 
typical — and  strode — another  typical  detail — 
into  the  palace  where,  perhaps  after  an  old  man- 
ner of  paying  old  debts,  he  made  the  fascinat- 
ing Xenia  his.  The  coronation  followed  and 
for  a  while  this  lad,  he  was  only  twenty-one, 
lived  in  state  with  a  tsarevna  for  mistress. 

In  fairyland,  kings  and  queens  never  appear 
without  their  crown  and  to  Dmitri,  the  Kreml, 
vomitory  of  crime  though  it  were,  must  have 
been  fairyland  then.  Whether  prince  or  im- 
postor, his  life  had  been  rude.  Hunger  had 
been  his  bedfellow,  peril  his  drink  and  sud- 
denly, through  one  of  the  prodigious  shuffles  of 
fate,  he  was  tossed  from  nowhere  into  every- 
thing. 

Above  him  swung  a  gold  bicephalous  bird. 
Heneath  the  eagle  was  a  panoply  of  canary  bro- 


38  The  Imperial  Orgy 

cade  festooned  with  pearls  that  silver  griffons 
upheld.  Beneath  the  panoply,  on  a  throne  of 
gold,  in  a  golden  robe,  he  sat.  About  him  were 
prelates  in  purple;  princes  in  ermine.  On  his 
head  was  the  crown;  in  his  hand  the  sceptre. 
But  at  his  feet,  in  the  attitude  of  a  slave,  a  man, 
old,  fat,  dressed  and  bejewelled  as  now  only 
maharajahs  are,  held,  with  venomous  and  greedy 
fingers,   the  imperial  sword. 

That  man,  that  slave,  whom  Dmitri  had  first 
disgraced  and  then  raised  to  the  position  of  valet, 
was  Vassili  Chouiski.  Watch  him!  He  is  the 
villain  in  this  drama  of  which  all  that  has  gone 
before  is  prelude. 

Years  earlier,  in  the  remote  obscurity  in  which 
the  savage  young  tsarevitch  lived,  Vassili's  had 
been  the  arm  chosen  by  Boris  to  eliminate  him. 
A  Rurikovitch  and  as  such  with  claims  of  his 
own  to  the  throne,  he  had  done  the  work,  not 
for  Boris,  but  for  himself,  a  design  which  Boris 
thwarted.  Since  then  he  had  bided  and  brooded 
and  plotted  and  for  what?  At  the  very  mo- 
ment when  he  might  have  called  Muscovy  his, 
the  dead  young  savage  had  revived,  not  merely 
to  thwart  him  again  but  to  disgrace  him.  Pub- 
licly, in  the  Red  Square,  Dmitri  had  had  him 
knouted,  as  a  preliminary  to  chopping  his  head 
off.    Then,  just  when  the  axe  was  raised,  Dmi- 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  39 

tri  had  laughed  and  pardoned,  yet  only  to  send 
him  to  Siberia  and,  as  the  cart  was  starting,  had 
laughed  anew,  pardoned  once  more  and  made 
him  his  valet.  Such  vengeance  might  have  en- 
venomed a  saint.  Vassili  was  not  a  saint.  A 
wretched,  greedy  old  man,  he  bided  and  plotted. 

With  the  careless  temerity  of  youth,  Dmitri 
abetted  him.  At  the  very  beginning,  in  flinging 
himself  from  the  crimson-legged  charger  and 
in  striding  into  the  palace,  he  affronted  Mos- 
cow. A  prince  of  Muscovy  never  strode.  When 
he  deigned  to  walk,  though  it  were  from  one 
room  to  another,  boiars  supported  him.  When 
he  rode,  they  lifted  him  up,  held  him  in  the 
saddle,  lifted  him  down,  treating  him  always 
like  an  idol.  Dmitri  was  grand-duke  and  tsar, 
but  primarily  a  man.  He  derided  old  customs 
and  with  them  the  abysmal  Muscovite  ignorance, 
which,  like  all  else  that  was  orthodox,  Russia 
revered. 

Former  grand-dukes  amused  themselves  with 
bear  fights  which  they  enjoyed  from  a  balcony. 
A  fight  was  arranged  for  Dmitri.  He  aban- 
doned the  balcony  and  killed  the  bear.  It  was 
a  tsar's  privilege  to  kill  his  subjects.  But  a 
bear,  no.     Moscow  drew  the  line  at  that. 

A  yet  graver  affront  was  Dmitri's  entourage. 
All  Poles,  they  were  all  pagans,  as  all  foreign- 


40  The  Imperial  Orgy 

ers  were.  Other  nations  professed  other  creeds. 
That  was  their  damnation.  Russia  alone  was 
holy.  Throughout  the  universe  her  lord  was 
the  one  Christian  king,  and  all  other  kings  his 
slaves.  But  was  Dmitri  a  Christian?  Was 
he  even  Muscovite?  He  allowed  the  Polish 
hussars  to  enter  the  Church  of  the  Mother  of 
God  with  clanking  swords  and  to  squat  there, 
leaning  against  the  sacred  ikons,  to  which  he 
never  bowed.  His  priests,  it  was  said,  were 
papists.  But  when  it  was  said  also  that  he  was 
to  marry  a  heretic,  it  was  suspected  that  he  could 
not  be  a  Russian  at  all,  rather,  as  Vassili  Choui- 
ski  insinuated,  a  hireling  employed  by  Sigis- 
mond  to  deliver  Muscovy  to  the  Polish  king. 

As  novelists  express  it,  the  ground  was  pre- 
pared. 

Into  the  gloom  of  the  Kreml,  Xenia  mean- 
while was  fading.  From  a  delight,  she  had  be- 
come an  ennui ;  from  a  vision,  a  shadow.  Deeper 
into  the  gloom  she  passed.  A  convent  opened 
and  swallowed  her.  Dimitri  nodded  good-rid- 
dance. He,  too,  was  preparing.  Maryna  was 
en  route. 

Already  the  treasure-chests  had  been  opened. 
The  sacks  of  gold  were  paid.  Then,  at  last, 
came  the  bride.  But  to  Moscow,  how  inde- 
cently! 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  41. 

In  a  chariot  drawn  by  eight  horses  that  were 
tricked  out  and  painted  to  resemble  tigers,  she 
appeared,  dressed  after  the  manner  of  Marie  de 
Medici,  with  a  ruff  two  feet  in  diameter,  a  bal- 
looning skirt,  a  waist  that  would  fit  in  a  garter, 
her  hair  done  high  and,  like  her  waist,  exposed. 

In  Muscovy,  the  hair  of  a  Christian  woman 
was  concealed  by  a  headgear.  Always  her  gown 
was  girdled  above  the  breast.  Never  had  Mos- 
cow seen  such  an  exhibition.  The  old  ortho- 
dox city  was  not  placated  by  the  presence  of 
the  girl's  father,  nor  by  the  presence  of  a  chape- 
ron, mistress  of  the  robes.  For  behind  the  heret- 
ics, trooped  a  retinue,  three  thousand  strong, 
and  what  Christian  woman  ever  took  an  army 
with  her  when  she  went  to  a  husband's  arms? 

Of  all  of  which  Dmitri  heard  nothing  and 
cared  less.  Later  he  did  hear.  At  the  moment 
he  was  supervising  the  welcome.  The  pomp  of 
that  is  said  to  have  been  prodigious.  No  doubt 
it  was.  In  the  great  hall  of  the  palace,  a  hall 
heaped  to  the  rafters  with  bizarre  vases  and 
fabulous  beasts,  there  were  concerts,  masquer- 
ades and  a  state  dinner  more  lavish  than  any- 
thing that  anywhere  had  been  known. 

Among  the  courses  which,  after  the  oriental 
fashion,  succeeded  each  other  interminably, 
there    were   swan's    knees,    lamb's    lungs,    roast 


42  The  Imperial  Orgy 

cygnets,  storks  cooked  in  ginger,  deer's  brains, 
lemon  soup,  sweetmeats  of  honey  and  attar  of 
rose.  Additionally  were  the  wines  of  Hungary, 
of  Alicante  and  the  Canaries,  together  with  the 
strong  waters  of  Holland  and  of  France.  But 
these,  all  of  them,  after  another  oriental  cus- 
tom, were  served  last. 

Dmitri  had  a  table  to  himself,  a  plate  to  him- 
self and  also  a  fork,  then  a  great  novelty.  The 
table  was  on  a  dais.  Below  and  beyond  the 
guests  feasted,  forkless,  from  trenchers.  Mary- 
na  was  not  present.  It  was  not  etiquette  that 
she  should  be.  Nor  did  she  appear  until  just 
prior  to  the  ceremony,  when  old  men  supported 
her,  as  though  she  were  an  infant  in  arms,  from 
the  cathedral's  entrance  to  the  altar.  Dmitri  was 
similarly  supported.  Etiquette  so  required.  To 
the  assembled  Poles  it  was  ridiculous.  They 
laughed  indecently. 

Afterward,  in  the  Kreml,  there  was  a  ball, 
during  which  Dmitri,  in  Polish  costume,  danced 
with  his  bride  and,  for  good  measure,  with  her 
father.  Beyond,  in  the  Red  Square,  Poles,  very 
drunk,  drew  their  swords,  pinked  the  Musco- 
vites. The  good  measure  was  full.  Concerts, 
balls,  masquerades,  in  particular  the  bride's  ex- 
hibition of  her  hair  and  waist,  these  things,  every 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  43 

one,  were  pagan  abominations.  The  good  meas- 
ure, full  already,  overflowed. 

To  Dmitri  and  Maryna  it  was  all  very  rap- 
turous. Life  at  its  apogee  had  begun.  The 
rapture  lasted  one  week.  At  the  stroke  of 
twelve  on  the  seventh  night,  men-at-arms,  en- 
rolled by  Chouiski,  were  clamouring  and  beat- 
ing at  the  bridal  door. 

A  naked  man  is  never  brave,  but  he  may  be 
adroit.  Dmitri  disappeared  through  a  win- 
dow. Maryna  shrieked,  as  perhaps  only  a 
frightened  girl  can  shriek.  Nearby,  in  an  ad- 
joining apartment,  were  her  women.  They  hur- 
ried to  her.  One  of  them,  the  chaperon,  was 
vast  and  formidable.  Under  the  immense  far- 
thingale which  she  wore,  Maryna  hid.  Just  in 
time.  The  men  had  broken  in.  The  other 
women,  who  were  not  at  all  formidable  and 
who,  being  Polish,  were  pretty,  were  carried 
away,  treated  as  playthings.  Maryna  escaped, 
in  a  shift,  it  is  said,  to  her  father.  The  house 
in  which  lie  lodged  was  besieged.  The  houses 
where  other  Poles  lodged  were  besieged  also. 
They  gave  as  good  as  was  sent.  But  a  lot  of 
them,  taken  in  taverns  and  the  open,  were  killed 
outright.  To  employ  an  archaic  phrase,  the 
streets  were  dyed — like  wool — with  blood. 

Dmitri,  in  vanishing  through  a  window,  dis- 


44  The  Imperial  Orgy 

appeared.  For  a  time,  that  is.  Presently  he 
was  found.  When  found,  he  had  broken  his 
legs.  He  could  not  move.  In  that  condition 
he  was  shot,  stabbed,  hacked  even  in  the  face, 
which  was  disgustingly  disfigured.  Incidentally 
he  was  insulted. 

"Dog  of  a  bastard,  tell  us  who  you  are?" 

Dmitri  made  no  reply.  He  was  dead.  A 
wandering  Jew  had  his  gabardine  torn  off.  It 
was  put  about  the  naked  body,  which,  carried 
to  the  Red  Square,  was  dumped  on  a  table.  On 
that  table  for  three  days  it  remained.  On  the 
third  night,  a  thin  blue  flame  hovered  above  it. 
The  phenomenon,  caused  probably  by  the 
corpse's  putrefaction,  created  a  terror  all  the 
more  profound  because  superstitious.  Who 
knew  what  it  might  portend? 

In  an  effort  to  ward  any  evil,  the  corpse  was 
carried  to  a  cemetery.  A  grave  was  dug.  The 
body  was  lowered  into  it.  Immediately  other 
phenomena  occurred.  Over  the  grave,  eagles 
were  seen  that  flew  away  when  approached  and 
then  returned.  Eagles!  At  least  they  were  not 
two-headed.  The  comfort  was  meagre.  At 
night,  the  flame  was  still  visible.  What  is  worse, 
sounds  were  heard,  oddly  discordant,  that  came, 
or  seemed  to  come,  from  below. 

The    terror    augmented.      The    grave    was 


-    -     -  ~~7  a  TlL.  .W.r,   .-'    — J 

DEMETBJVS   Ernpn- 
ana 

i  \in .Comaunbey 
i      :'_hfort'.         > .  etc . 


DMITRI 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  45 

opened.  It  was  empty!  That  body  had  moved. 
It  had  moved  of  itself!  It  was  at  the  other 
end  of  the  cemetery! 

There  could  be  no  doubt  about  it  then.  The 
monkish  accusation  was  recalled.  Dmitri  was 
a  sorcerer  who  knew  the  infernal  art  of  post- 
mortem resuscitation.  With  a  vampire  one  could 
not  be  too  careful.  As  supreme  precaution,  the 
body  was  burned  and  the  ashes,  rammed  in  a 
cannon,  were  fired  from  it.  Then  only  did  terror 
pass.  Dmitri,  his  ghost  or  its  counterfeit,  had 
been  definitely  laid. 

Maryna,  meanwhile,  minus  her  crown,  and 
her  father,  minus  his  sacks,  were  extracted  from 
the  besiegers  and  invited  to  leave.  The  invita- 
tion was  not  cordial,  but  the  forms  were  there. 
Polish  reprisals,  always  possible,  were,  if  pos- 
sible, to  be  avoided.  Hence  the  civility  which 
emanated  from  Chouiski  who,  in  the  riot,  had 
become  tsar. 

Maryna,  calling  herself  tsaritsa  still  and  in- 
sisting on  being  treated  as  such,  set  forth  with 
the  surviving  Poles  for  Sendomir.  She  never 
reached  it.  The  great  playwright  that  destiny 
is,  had  for  her  an  epilogue  in  reserve.  One 
may  wonder  whether,  in  insisting  on  her  pre- 
rogatives, she  knew  it.  Logically,  the  drama 
ended  dramatically,  as  drama  should  end,  on 


46  The  Imperial  Orgy 

the  bloody  night  of  the  interrupted  honeymoon. 
Did  she  know  that  it  was  to  be  resumed.  One 
wonders. 

Leo  X.,  a  very  lettered  pope,  said  and  sensi- 
bly enough,  "Since  God  has  given  us  the  papacy, 
let  us  enjoy  it."  Chouiski  could  also  enjoy  him- 
self. An  ignorant  and  very  vile  old  man,  he 
was  not  lettered.  But  he  was  capable  at  least 
of  a  butcher's  pleasures  and,  other  things  being 
equal,  he  might  have  supped  on  them.  The 
great  playwright  had  planned  differently.  Be- 
fore Maryna  had  gone  more  than  half  the  way 
to  Sendomir,  a  coup  de  theatre  occurred.  That 
devil  of  a  Dmitri  was  alive  again! 

The  news  of  it,  filtering  through  the  Kreml, 
struck  Chouiski  dumb.  Reaching  the  travel- 
lers en  route  for  Poland,  it  stupefied  them  as 
well  it  might.  They  looked  at  the  widowed 
bride  who  perhaps  was  widowed  no  longer. 
Perhaps!  It  was  all  highly  phantasmagoric. 
But  in  looking  they  saw  that  their  stupefaction 
was  not  shared  by  her.  She  appeared  to  know 
all  about  it.    It  may  be  that  she  did. 

Afterward  it  was  reported  that  on  the  bloody 
night,  Turkish  horses  disappeared  from  the 
tsaral  stables.  It  was  also  reported  that  in  the 
early  morning,  a  boatman  on  the  Oka  ferried 
three  men,  one  of  whom,   indicating  another, 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  47 

said  that  he  was  tsar;  a  statement  which  he  re- 
peated later  that  day  to  an  innkeeper  on  the 
road  to  Tuchino.  In  each  instance  he  had 
added: — "He  will  return  with  an  army  and  re- 
ward you." 

That  may  or  may  not  have  been  true.  But 
whether  true  or  false,  it  was  also  reported  that 
letters  stamped  with  Dmitri's  seal  were  in  cir- 
culation. At  any  rate,  a  cavalry  republic,  the 
Cossacks  of  the  Don,  were  rising  and  rallying  in 
his  name. 

"In  his  name,  yes,  but  in  whose  else?  Who 
is  this  impostor?"  Chouiski,  with  recovered 
speech,  demanded.  It  was  at  this  juncture,  in 
an  effort  to  show  that  whoever  the  reincarnation 
might  be,  it  was  not  that  of  the  original  tsare- 
vitch,  it  was  then  that  the  wretched  old  man 
evolved  a  lovely  expedient.  He  ordered  the 
young  savage's  tomb  opened  and  commanded  his 
canonisation.  The  priests  may  have  wept  at 
the  altars,  they  obeyed. 

Dmitri  then  was  at  Tuchino.  Whether  this 
Dmitri  were  the  prince  twice  dead,  or  another 
being,  the  reader  may  take  a  moment  to  decide. 
It  had  taken  Maryna  no  longer.  She  hurried 
to  him,  threw  herself  into  his  virile  arms,  one 
of  which  was  longer  than  the  other.  It  is  no- 
where related  that  that  malformation  had  been 


48  The  Imperial  Orgy 

remarked  in  Moscow,  but  it  was  the  peculiarity 
of  the  murdered  young  tsarevitch. 

In  Tuchino,  a  bandit's  lair,  splendour  was 
absent.  For  balls  there  were  riots;  for  concerts, 
brawls.  Cossacks  drink  nobly.  The  capacity 
of  Poles  is  proverbial.  What  is  termed  the 
flower  of  the  nobility  joined  Dmitri  in  this  lair 
which,  camp,  lupanar  and  fortress  combined, 
contained  a  hundred  thousand  men,  every  one 
of  them  eager  to  reseat  a  tsar,  eagerer  still  to 
loot  the  tsaral  treasure.  Then,  presently,  off 
they  started. 

Chouiski  had  thought  of  enjoying  himself. 
Instead  he  quaked.  Sigismond,  an  army  at  his 
heels,  was  marching  on  him.  Chouiski  quaked 
at  that,  but  far  less  than  he  quaked  at  the  demon 
Dmitri  who  was  marching  also.  Let  the  sor- 
cerer again  get  him  and  this  time  farewell  to 
his  head. 

Against  a  sorcerer,  sorcery  is  indicated.  At 
Chouiski's  orders,  magicians  worked  their  spells. 
Infants  unborn  were  torn  from  their  mothers. 
From  gutted  horses  hearts  were  removed.  With 
both  a  horrible  hash  was  made  and  strewn,  full- 
handed,  as  grain  is  strewn,  before  the  walls. 
The  necromancy  succeeded.  Abruptly,  though 
through  what  normal  connivance  has  never 
clearly  appeared,  once  more  Dmitri  was  assas- 


Dmitri  the  Sorcerer  49 

sinated,  yet,  as  was  customary  with  him,  briefly 
only.  In  the  interval,  Maryna,  carried  off  by 
a  Tatar,  vanished  on  horseback  from  history. 

The  sorcerer  reappeared.  More  exactly, 
there  was  another  incarnation.  Probably  the 
new  Dmitri  was  not  Dmitri  at  all.  None  the 
less  the  avatars  continued.  The  surprising  crea- 
ture never  again  entered  the  Kreml,  but  his 
ghost  was  not  definitely  laid  until  Chouiski  died. 
That  seemed  to  placate  him. 

Then  leisurely  the  preludes  to  another  and  a 
greater  drama  began.  Transiently  the  stage 
was  occupied  by  Mikhail  Romanov,  an  insig- 
nificant insect  who,  every  morning,  beat  his 
empty  head  fifteen  hundred  times  on  the  stones 
before  the  altar.  That  insect  was  grandfather 
of  a  gorilla. 


Ill 

PETER  THE  GREAT 

THE  night  in  which  Hercules  was  con- 
ceived lasted  forty-eight  hours.  So  at 
least  it  has  been  said.  Assuming  that 
the  story  be  true,  the  night  in  which  Peter  was 
conceived  must  have  lasted  twenty-four. 

Who  the  male  collaborator  may  have  been  is 
unimportant.  But  the  problem  perplexed  him. 
In  a  scene,  tolerably  dramatic,  which  Dolgorou- 
kov  recites,  he  shouted  it. 

"Whose  son  am  I?"  Glaring,  he  pointed. 
"Yours,  Tihon  Streshnief  ?  Speak  or  I  will  have 
you  strangled." 

Streshnief  fell  on  his  knees.  "Batushka! 
Mercy!  How  can  I  tell?  I  was  not  the  only 
one!" 

In  the  chronicles  of  nations  figures  arise. 
Time  passes  and  they  pass  with  it.  They  are 
forgotten  like  spilt  wine.  Occasionally  come 
figures  that  persist.  Usually  they  are  brutes. 
It  is  the  Caesars  that  are  remembered,  not  the 
saints.    Cyrillus,  a  bishop,  contrived  to  be  useful 

50 


Peter  the  Great  51 

and  to  be  beautiful.  To  be  both  is  to  be  sublime. 
Sublimity  is  a  dangerous  occupation.  It  may 
lead  to  oblivion  and  also  to  Golgotha.  Cyrillus 
gave  Russia  nothing  less  than  a  language.  His 
reward  is  the  dustbin.  With  the  alphabet  that 
he  created  the  name  of  Petrus  Maximus  is  writ- 
ten. It  is  written  on  a  page  of  granite.  The 
granite  is  red.  Voltaire  thumbed  it  and  said: 
"Half  hero."  Voltaire  paused  and  added: 
"Half  tiger." 

A  tiger  is  a  beautiful  animal.  There  was 
nothing  beautiful  about  Peter,  nor  is  there  about 
a  gorilla.     Peter  was  a  gorilla  with  brains. 

Like  the  great  apes  in  a  Borneo  jungle,  he 
sprang  and  killed.  He  had  the  same  indis- 
putable instinct  for  destruction,  the  same  elas- 
ticity, the  same  quick  subtlety  of  sense.  In 
Moor's  portrait  of  him,  the  expression,  vaguely 
ruminant,  is  that  of  a  beast  that  has  fed.  Back 
of  it  is  another,  an  impression  of  will,  inflexi- 
ble as  an  axe  and  of  which  you  feel  the  chill  and 
the  edge.  The  man  is  there,  framed  in  wood, 
like  a  bird  of  prey  nailed  on  a  panel. 

Probably  the  reincarnation  of  a  Tatar  khan, 
necessarily  he  was  a  nihilist.  "Take  earth  and 
heaven,  take  all  laws  human  and  divine  and 
spit  on  them  and  that,"  said  a  lucid  exponent, 
"is  nihilism."     Nihilism  and  bolshevism  differ, 


52  The  Imperial  Orgy 

but  only  in  spelling.  Peter  was  the  original  bol- 
shevist. 

His  earliest  bath  was  blood.  At  the  death  of 
his  mother's  husband,  surviving  enthusiasts 
formed  opposing  factions.  Cheerfully,  the 
guardians  of  the  peace  participated  in  their  mas- 
sacre of  each  other.  The  spouting  blood 
drenched  Peter;  drenched  Sophia,  his  sister; 
drenched  Ivan,  his  brother,  with  whom  he  had 
ascended  a  two-seated  throne.  Back  of  the 
throne  was  a  chair.  Before  it  hung  a  curtain, 
behind  which  was  the  girl.  A  moment  only. 
Sophia  was  a  phantom.  So  also  was  Ivan.  Peter 
alone  was  real.    Watch  himl 

At  his  feet  Russia  sprawled,  inert,  chaotic;  a 
land  still  mediaeval,  but  without  chivalry,  ro- 
mance, poetry,  troubadours  and  cours  d'amour. 
It  was  a  land  across  which  beings  moved,  ig- 
norant as  carps.  Of  the  mediaeval  spirit  they 
possessed  only  the  sure  cognition  of  hell.  Other- 
wise, its  night  enveloped  them.  They  loved  it. 
Except  drink,  it  was  the  only  thing  they  did  love. 
A  protection,  it  made  them  obscure  See  what 
he  does  to  them  and  to  it. 

As  yet  he  was  a  cub.  Wait  until  he  grows. 
Wait  until  he  becomes,  what  he  did  become, 
seven  feet  tall — seven  feet  which  to  those  be- 
ings must  have  seemed  seven  hundred.     When 


Peter  the  Great  53 

the  gorilla  was  grown,  history  beheld  what  the 
tired  old  gossip  had  never  beheld  before  and 
never  has  witnessed  since,  the  spectacle  of  a  na- 
tion, backward,  obstinate,  rigid,  unwilling  to  de- 
velop, tossed  from  Asia  into  Europe,  knouted 
into  evolution,  terrorised  into  modernity. 

Terror  was  Peter's  nurse.  His  toys  were 
weapons.  His  palace,  haunted  by  nightmare, 
was  hung  with  horror.  Before  him  the  history 
of  his  house  uncoiled  in  shudders.  He  gasped, 
but  only  for  air.  When  he  stretched  his  legs, 
dwarfs  in  double  rows  surrounded  him  with 
screens  of  violet  and  concealing  silk.  Even  a 
cub  would  balk  at  that.  When  he  could,  he 
got  to  the  sea.  Through  an  atavism  proceed- 
ing perhaps  from  the  pirates  from  whom  he 
presumptively  descended,  he  had  dreamed  of 
it.  His  predecessors  had  dreamed  also,  but  they 
had  fought.  There  was  the  Baltic.  It  belonged 
to  the  Xorse.  There  was  the  Euxine.  It  be- 
longed to  the  Turks.  The  dream  of  one  or  both 
was  human  to  the  sons  of  rowers. 

In  the  Kreml,  Sophia  dreamed  not  of  the  sea 
but  of  the  sceptre.  She  wanted  it  one  and  in- 
divisible in  her  hand.  She  wanted  to  be  auto- 
crat. She  became  a  prisoner.  Those  who  had 
wanted  for  her  what  she  wanted  were  put  in 
cages  and  burned  alive.     Shortly  and  silently 


54  The  Imperial   Orgy 

Ivan  disappeared.  Peter  was  sole  monarch, 
lord  absolute  of  everybody,  proprietor  of  Rus- 
sia, despot  of  her  denizens  and  destiny,  alone  on 
the  two-seated  throne. 

From  it  he  stared  at  the  sea  which  no  other 
tsar  had  seen.  He  determined  to  cross  it,  which 
no  other  Russian  had  done.  Gautier  declared 
it  indecent  for  a  young  man  to  enter  the  draw- 
ing-room of  life  without  a  book  of  verse  for  bou- 
tonniere.  Peter  felt  it  unfitting  to  enter  the 
drawing-room  of  the  world  without  a  victory 
in  his  buttonhole.  At  the  time  he  lacked  even 
a  yawl.  From  abroad  he  beckoned  craftsmen, 
made  a  fleet,  sailed  the  Don,  attacked  Azov, 
took  it. 

Then,  to  see  the  sights,  there  started  forth  a 
savage,  young,  tall,  dark,  grimacing,  neurotic, 
always  in  a  hurry;  a  lout  whom  a  napkin  em- 
barrassed; an  oaf  whom  corsets  surprised;  a 
monarch  who  was  a  rustic;  a  potentate  who  was 
a  clown;  a  tsar  crassly  ignorant  and  aware  of 
it;  a  man  vital,  violent,  elemental,  bestial, 
drunk  every  night  of  his  life. 

On  the  part  of  a  Russian  subject,  travelling 
was  treason.  A  junketing  prince  was  sac- 
rilegious. Peter  who  was  to  kill  men  with  his 
bare  hands,  who,  while  he  drank  and  looked  on, 


Peter  the  Great  55 

was  to  order  heads  off  for  his  amusement,  left 
clandestinely,  incognitot  disguised. 

Simianly  inquisitive,  seeing  a  thousand 
things  that  amazed  him,  seeing  civilisation 
which  amazed  him  most,  learning  in  Saardam 
how  to  handle  a  ship,  in  London  how  to  handle 
a  scalpel,  in  Vienna  how  to  use  a  fork,  assimi- 
lating every  "idea  and  forgetting  none,  he  learned 
how  to  recruit  an  army,  build  a  navy,  create  a 
nation  and  supply  it,  off  hand,  by  force  of  edicts, 
with  a  veneer  of  civilisation  that  could  crack 
and  did  and  with  a  report  that  startled  the  world. 

The  bolshevist  was  an  ape,  but  ape-artificer. 
In  occult  circles  it  is  said  that  Victoria  R.  I.  was 
formerly  Alfred  the  Great.  If  that  be  true, 
Peter,  prior  to  becoming  a  Tatar  khan,  may 
have  been  Nero,  though  in  that  case  he  had  de- 
generated in  the  progression. 

At  Kcenigsburg  he  asked  to  see  somebody — 
anybody — broken  on  the  wheel,  a  variety  of  tor- 
ture which  he  thought  might  do  for  Moscow. 
The  authorities  regretted  that  they  had  no  avail- 
able criminal. 

"Here,"  said  Peter,  "take  one  of  my  suite." 

Voltaire  had  it  from  Frederick,  who  had  it 
from  a  former  envoy,  that,  one  night  in  Moscow, 
Peter  amused  himself  by  decapitating  twenty 
men,  drinking  flagons  of  brandy  between  each 


56  The  Imperial  Orgy 

stroke,  after  which  he  invited  the  Prussian  rep- 
resentative to  try  his  hand  at  it.  Nero  would 
not  have  done  that;  he  lacked  the  energy,  lacked 
the  brandy.  For  the  greater  glory  of  Jupiter, 
he  lacked,  too,  the  Prussian. 

Subsequently,  Peter  acquired  an  interest,  un- 
platonic  and  brief,  in  Mary  Hamilton,  a  young 
woman  of  Scotch  descent,  related  more  or  less 
vaguely  to  the  dukes  of  that  name.  Shortly  he 
threw  her  over.  Afterward,  as  the  result  of  an- 
other interest,  she  had  a  child  and  killed  it,  a 
very  customary  proceeding,  but  to  which,  in 
this  instance,  Peter  objected  on  the  ground,  per- 
haps valid,  that  the  child  might  have  become  a 
man  whom  he  could  decapitate. 

The  theatre  was  prepared.  That  theatre,  the 
scaffold,  was  a  stage,  carpeted  with  red,  hung 
with  black,  about  which  an  avid  crowd  col- 
lected. 

Mary  Hamilton,  in  white,  dressed  like  a  bride, 
but,  in  honour  of  the  groom,  with  black  rib- 
bons, was  brought  there.  She  was  fainting. 
Peter  carried  her  up  the  steps,  forced  her  to 
kneel,  looked  on  at  the  operation,  picked  up  the 
bloody  head  that  had  rolled  on  the  crimson  car- 
pet, gave  a  lecture  on  anatomy  and  the  spinal 
column,  eyed  the  pallid  lips  which  so  often  had 


Peter  the  Great  57 

kissed  his  own,  dropped  the  head,  descended 
the  steps,  strolled  away. 

A  pleasant  person.  In  the  alcove  he  was 
equally  attractive.  There  Villebois  etched  him. 
"II  etait  un  vray  monstre  de  luxure.  II  s'aban- 
donnait  a  des  acdes  de  iureur  erotique  dans 
lesquels  l'age  et  le  sexe  meme  luy  importait  me- 
diocrement." 

That  was  Peter,  afterward  the  Great.  At  the 
time  he  was  merely  horrible.  In  the  course  of 
the  foreign  junket,  tiresome  news  reached  him 
from  home.  Sophia,  weary  of  her  prison,  but 
wearier  of  her  demon  brother,  was  urging  Mos- 
cow to  rebel.  The  budding  mutiny  was  hushed. 
You  might  have  thought  the  matter  at  an  end. 
It  had  not  begun.  On  Sophia,  on  Moscow,  the 
gorilla  pounced.  Corridors  of  ardent  chambers, 
perfectly  equipped  with  every  form  of  fiendish- 
ness,  functioned  night  and  day.  After  prelimi- 
nary and  very  agonising  delays,  those  who  en- 
tered there  were  burned  alive.  For  others, 
death  was  quicker.  Ordinary  persons  were  de- 
capitated in  coils,  at  the  rate  of  fifty  at  a  time. 
Their  bodies,  carted  in  thousands  beyond  the 
walls,  were  left  to  rot.  From  the  balconies  of 
Sophia's  prison  two  hundred  hung,  as  grapes 
hang,  in  bunches. 

For  the  greater  glory  of  God,  Torquemada 


58  The  Imperial  Orgy- 

resurrected  Moloch  and  set  Castille  on  fire.  For 
the  greater  awe  of  Peter,  Moscow  was  turned 
into  a  gehenna.  There  were  groves  of  gibbets, 
blood  in  lakes,  hills  of  dead,  tortures  vaster  than 
Carthage  knew,  than  Castille  beheld.  Peter's 
deputies  sank  outwearied.  Peter  was  tireless. 
Axe  in  hand,  he  stalked  knee-deep  in  the  hu- 
man abattoir.  That  axe,  dented  each  night,  each 
morning  was  resharpened. 

Years  later,  his  son  confessed  a  mortal  sin. 
He  had  hoped  his  father  would  die.  Com- 
miserately  the  priest  raised  a  hand.  "We  all 
wish  it." 

Yet  no  sooner  had  he  gone,  than  he  became 
Peter  the  Great,  a  nation's  idol.  In  Greece, 
Heraklitos  died  of  laughing,  literally  of  laugh- 
ing, at  the  folly  of  his  contemporaries.  Herakli- 
tos was  then  an  old  man.  In  Russia,  he  might 
have  died  younger  but  he  would  have  laughed 
more. 

Peter  was  a  butcher.  Also  he  was  tsar.  The 
terms  are  synonymous.  In  addition,  he  was  den- 
tist. If  you  so  wished  he  pulled  your  teeth. 
He  was  quite  capable  of  pulling  them  any  way. 
He  pulled  a  woman's  who  did  not  want  him  to 
and  who  died  of  it.  He  attended  her  funeral. 
Bon  prince,  he  was  practical.  He  gave  Mos- 
cow her  first  hospitals,  her  first  pharmacies  and 


Peter  the  Great  59 

kept  them  busy.  In  his  leisures,  which  occa- 
sionally were  spacious,  he  presided  at  the  Bez- 
pietchalnyi  sobor — the  council  that  knows  no 
sadness — an  assembly  of  phallicists  whose  cere- 
monies exceeded  anything  that  even  the  lost 
books  of  Elephantis  may  have  told. 

From  the  council  that  knew  no  sadness,  Peter 
passed  to  the  council  that  knew  nothing  else. 
Over  that  also  he  presided,  as  over  all  matters 
he  presided  as  well.  He  was  the  state.  He  was 
the  living  law.  Death  was  his  servant.  He 
ordered.    Death  obeyed. 

In  the  hideous  night  when  Domitian  ruled 
old  Rome,  informers  were  at  work.  Any  de- 
nunciation, false  or  true,  meant  death.  On  the 
burg  of  Peter  that  night  descended.  As  in  Rome, 
informers  were  rewarded.  For  anything,  for 
nothing,  the  heedless  were  denounced.  On  a 
cellar  wall  a  woman  saw,  or  said  she  saw,  let- 
ters traced  by  an  unknown  hand  in  an  unknown 
tongue.  The  knout!  A  student  in  his  cups  bab- 
bled fretfully.  The  rack!  Before  the  tsar  as 
he  passed  a  drunken  peasant  lurched.  The  axel 
The  arrest  of  one  usually  involved  the  arrest 
of  a  dozen.  The  original  culprit,  put  to  the 
question,  shrieked  whatever  names  he  could 
think  of.  When  he  could  think  of  no  more  he 
was  masked,   led  through  the  streets,  made  to 


fio  The  Imperial  Orgy 

point  out  this  one,  that  one,  any  one.  At  sight 
of  him,  a  cry  went  up  :— 'The  mask!  The  mask!" 
Instantly  the  streets  were  empty.  In  Rome  an 
accused  accused  his  accuser.  The  latter  went 
mad.  That  breath  of  madness  blew  through 
the  burg  that  Peter  built.  "Near  the  tsar,  near 
death,"  a  Russian  proverb  runs,  and  the  reign, 
which  was  a  reign  of  terror,  taught  many  things, 
but  chiefly  how  to  die — with  your  nostrils  torn 
out,  your  eyes  extracted,  your  ears  severed,  your 
body  beaten  into  a  bag  of  pulp,  or,  in  the  ardent 
chambers,  cremated  while  yet  you  lived.  God 
save  the  tsar! 

Resembling  no  one,  intellectually  blind  and 
yet  intelligent;  archroyal  and  very  low,  this 
brute  whom  fate  made  despot,  destiny  made  seer. 
In  the  nation  a  force  dumb,  obscure,  but  latent, 
was  to  elevate  it  from  an  insignificant  satrapy 
into  an  empire  wider  than  the  moon  at  its  full. 
That  force  recognised  itself  first  in  Peter.  In 
the  chaos  about  him,  he  foresaw  the  imperial- 
ism to  be. 

The  future  imperialism  is  not  obvious  in  the 
butcher.  But  it  appears  in  the  ogre  who  dragged 
from  Europe  long  tatters  of  her  civilisation  and 
forced  them  down  Russia's  throat.  The  ogre 
will  enter  in  a  moment.    A  soldier  comes  first. 

In  Sweden,  at  that  time,  stood  Charles  XII., 


PET]  R    I  III    <  IRE  \f 


Peter  the  Great  6l 

a  man  of  bronze,  a  monarch  whose  kingdom  was 
not  of  this  world,  whose  palace  was  the  battle- 
field and  who  dressed  in  war's  rich  livery  of 
blood.  He  had  overturned  the  throne  of  Po- 
land. He  proposed  to  demolish  Peter's,  dictate 
terms  in  the  Kreml  and,  from  there,  take  on  the 
sanguinary  and  gorgeous  East. 

He  started  for  Moscow,  moving  via  the 
Ukraine  and  Byron's  Mazeppa— Hugo's  Ma- 
zeppa  also,  Pushkin's  as  well.  It  is  from  a 
paragraph  in  Voltaire's  Hlstoire  de  Russte  that 
Byron  and  Hugo  evolved  their  hero  who  was 
a  hero,  to  credulous  women,  and  also  to  a  man 
who  was  not  credulous  at  all. 

Peter  believed  in  Mazeppa.  He  trusted  him, 
counted  on  his  Cossacks  and  believed,  trusted 
and  counted  in  vain.  When  Charles  appeared, 
Mazeppa  joined  him,  a  treachery  that  history 
damned  and  poetry  absolved.  Together  they 
marched  on  Peter,  beating  him  on  the  way  so 
thoroughly  that  Peter  laughed.  It  was  a  les- 
son. He  enjoyed  it.  "The  devils  will  teach 
me  to  beat  them,"  he  shouted  and  laughed 
again.     The  laugh   rang  true. 

Presently  Charles  was  at  Pultowa,  the  siege 
of  which  a  grave  historian  has  stated — and  stated 
too  in  that  language  which  only  grave  historians 
employ — "he  hotly  pressed. "     The  description 


62  The  Imperial  Orgy 

is  pleasant.  The  cold  was  such  that  crows  fell 
dead.  Charles  wounded  there  and  delirious 
from  the  wound,  called  to  Turks  who  never 
heard,  to  Poles  who  never  came. 

Peter  did  both  and  so  effectively  that  Charles, 
delirious  still,  was  carted  away,  carted  afar, 
carted  into  obscurity  where  he  died  as  he  had 
lived,  as  Roland  lived  and  died,  clasping  his 
sole  mistress,  his  sword. 

Peter,  who  had  learned  his  lesson  and  who 
had  routed  what  he  had  not  destroyed,  sent  for 
the  officers  taken  prisoner. 

"Where  is  your  viking?"  he  asked  them. 
"Where  is  my  brother  Charles? 

"Keep  your  swords,"  he  added,  "and  let  me 
see  if  you  can  keep  your  heads." 

That  night  he  got  drunk  with  them,  but,  more 
potent  than  brandy,  was  the  fact  that  triumph- 
antly he  had  entered  the  drama  of  the  world. 

Pultowa  has  its  date.  That  date  marks  an 
era.  Muscovy,  hitherto  held  down  by  Swedes, 
by  Poles,  by  Tatars  and  Turks,  was  ready  for 
them  all.  Heretofore  her  history  had  been  one 
long  humiliation.  At  Pultowa  she  came  of  age. 
To  celebrate  it,  Petersburg  leaped  into  being. 

A  moment  before  Peter  had  asked: — "Where 
are  my  legions?" 

Moscow   answered.     Moscow   pointed   to   a 


Peter  the  Great  63 

long,  double  hedge  of  skulls  gibbeted  there  to 
remind  Russia  of  the  disadvantages  of  conspir- 
ing against  him.  In  Moscow  he  had  massacred 
an  armyi 

The  troops  since  recruited  were  untrained, 
unfit.  They  were  sheep.  He  turned  away.  In 
turning  he  scattered  invitations  afar.  Tacticians, 
drill-sergeants,  professors  of  the  art  of  war,  the 
surgeons  of  her  clinic,  became  his  guests.  Pres- 
ently, turning  back  to  the  sheep,  he  operated  a 
transfusion.  He  put  blood  in  them,  mettle,  his 
own  instinct  for  destruction.  Pultowa  was  the 
result  and  with  it  a  tripled  realm,  balconies  that 
overlooked  the  seas,  a  proscenium  box  on  Eu- 
rope, the  dominion  of  the  north. 

Waliszewski,  who  has  written  very  passion- 
ately about  him,  says  that  he  had  an  idea  a  day. 
For  a  genius  that  is  meagre;  for  a  monarch  it 
is  magnificent;  for  a  Muscovite  a  miracle.  Per- 
haps Waliszewski  exaggerated.  Besides,  opin- 
ions vary  as  to  what  constitutes  an  idea.  But 
the  gorilla  had  brains.  With  them  he  substi- 
tuted himself  for  time.  The  labour  of  centuries 
he  effected  in  years.  He  tossed  the  state  up,  as 
skyscrapers  arc  tossed,  one  storey  quick  on  the 
other.  From  the  jimcrack  Russia  has  suffered 
ever  since.  Yet  his  business  was  not  with  the 
future.     It  was  with  the  past  which  was  then 


64  The   Imperial  Orgy 

the  present,  which  stuck  its  tongue  at  him  and 
which  he  pulled  as  he  pulled  teeth. 

It  was  singular  and  easy.  The  creature  was 
a  crowned  anarchist.  More  technically,  he  was 
an  autocrat,  which  means  the  same  thing.  An 
anarchist  wants  to  do  as  he  likes.  An  autocrat 
can — or  could.  Peter  could.  'He  had  merely  to 
wTill  and  his  will  was  law.  He  willed  that  what 
he  thought,  all  must  think:  that  what  he  did, 
all  must  do.  He  willed  that  Russia  should 
dance  to  his  piping,  dress  to  his  taste,  play  the 
clown,  abolish  her  customs,  assassinate  her  ideals, 
abjure  her  gods.  He  so  willed  because  such 
was  his  pleasure.  When  that  pleasure  was  not 
gratified  instantly,  were  there  misunderstand- 
ing, weakness,  fatigue,  the  axe! 

The  Russian  year  began  September  1st.  It 
began  then  because  on  that  day,  5508  B.C.,  God 
created  the  world.  Nothing  could  be  more  au- 
thentic. To  celebrate  the  event,  everybody  fud- 
dled and  fought.  But  nobody  smoked.  To- 
bacco was  heathen.  Nobody  danced.  In  the  as- 
cetic orthodoxy  of  the  Russian  Church,  gaiety 
was  sinful,  instrumental  music  forbidden,  learn- 
ing was  damned  and  ignorance  blessed. 

Men  still  wore  the  long,  flowing  robes  of  the 
East.  What  women  wore  is  immaterial.  When 
serfs,  they  were  soulless.     They  did  not  exist. 


Peter  the  Great  65 

Women  of  the  upper  class  did  not  appear.  Shut 
away  in  oriental  seclusion,  they  were  invisible. 
But  all  men  were  longly  robed  and  all  were 
bearded.  They  had  to  be.  In  the  sacred  icon- 
ography, Father  and  Son  were  bearded  and 
robed.  Man,  made  after  the  image  of  God, 
must  be  like  unto  Him.  Any  dissimilarity  was 
sacrilege. 

That  sacrilege  Peter  commanded.  In  a  ukase 
written  with  the  knout,  beards  and  robes  were 
ordered  off,  the  women  were  ordered  out.  Mod- 
els of  what  all  were  to  wear  and  which  those 
who  did  not  wear  got  the  knout  until  they  did, 
hung  in  the  Red  Square.  Prior  to  the  knout, 
robes  were  torn  off  at  the  waist;  beards  were 
torn  out  by  the  roots.  Incidentally  men  were 
ordered  to  smoke.  They  were  ordered  to  revise 
their  calendar.  The  year  no  longer  began  in  the 
autumn,  as  it  had  begun,  or  in  the  spring,  as  it 
should  begin,  but  after  the  absurd  Roman  fash: 
ion  which  Europe  had  adopted. 

With  edicts  and  the  lash,  the  year  was  re- 
vised. Men  were  shaved,  redressed,  a  pipe  was 
stuck  in  their  mouth,  and  the  beauties  of  their 
household  were  ordered  into  society  in  a  land 
in  which  there  was  none,  had  been  none  rather, 
for  Peter  created  ballrooms  with  a  ukase.  The 
boiars   were   pronunciamentoed   into  entertain- 


66  The  Imperial  Orgy 

ing.  They  were  told  what  to  do,  what  not  to 
do,  the  days  and  the  hours  for  it. 

No  gambling,  but  dancing  was  rigorously  re- 
quired. As  nobody  knew  how  to  dance,  Peter 
personally  gave  lessons,  instructing  the  sullen 
beauties  that,  for  the  go  of  it,  they  must  kiss 
their  partners.  To  encourage  them,  he  ladled 
brandy  in  wooden  spoons,  not  forgetting  to  help 
himself,  becoming  in  the  process  as  drunk  as 
the  ladies,  if  possible  drunker,  teaching  them 
not  merely  the  pas  de  quoi,  but  the  elegancies 
of  deportment  and  the  pomps  of  etiquette. 

Rudiments  followed.  The  bear,  taught  to 
dance,  was  taught  to  read.  He  was  given  an 
alphabet,  partly  Greek,  partly  Bulgarian,  which 
Cyrillus  had  supplied,  which  Peter  refashioned 
and  which  seven-tenths  of  Russia  have  not  yet 
acquired.  Subsequent  autocrats  objected  to  its 
dissemination.  A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous 
thing  and  a  lot  of  it  may  be  revolutionary.  Cath- 
erine the  Greater  said  that  if  the  inmates  of  her 
little  household — Russia  was  her  little  house- 
hold— knew  how  to  read,  they  would  write  her 
ofT.  Sensible  woman.  But  she  had  seen  the 
French  Revolution,  which  to  Peter  was  unim- 
agined.  It  becomes  therefore  rather  instructive 
to  watch  him  reaching  down  into  mediaeval 
dungeons,  pulling  the  prisoners  into  a  modern 


Peter  the  Great  67 

reformatory,  bundling  them  out  of  their  ideals 
into  his,  kicking  over  the  past  with  one  seven- 
leagued  boot,  projecting  them  into  the  future 
with  the  other,  tossing  them  into  the  mould 
from  which  contemporaneous  Russia  with  her 
colossal  corruption  and  volcanic  anarchy  pro- 
ceeded. 

For  university,  Russia  had  the  scaffold;  for 
curriculum,  the  knout.  These  things  instruct. 
They  teach  the  aesthetics  of  servility,  hypocrisy, 
smothered  hatred  and  bursting  bombs.  But  not 
morals.  Peter,  devoid  of  any  as  an  orang- 
outang, saw  no  reason  for  them.  He  may  have 
been  right.  Mathematics  know  nothing  of 
morals.  Political  economy  is  not  interested  in 
them.  Art  ignores  them.  They  are  not  a  prin- 
ciple of  civilisation.  It  was  not  for  lack  of  them 
that  Rome  fell.  What  sapped  her  was  malaria. 
Morals  are  a  luxury  and  Peter  in  his  catarrhine 
ignorance  was  unaware  that  the  luxuries  of  life 
are  its  necessities.  He  wanted  the  superficial 
and  the  veneered.  The  tears  he  sowed  to  get 
them,  tsardom  reaped. 

To  Waliszewski,  he  was  the  noblest  Roman 
of  them  all.  He  may  readily  have  been  that 
and  remain  the  perfectly  ignoble  brute  that  he 
was  to  his  pigmies,  for  whom,  very  thanklessly, 


68  The  Imperial  Orgy 

he  strung  balconies  from  which  they  could  look 
at  Europe  and  Europe  could  look  at  them. 

To  enhance  the  view,  abruptly,  on  the  Neva 
— a  Tatar  word  that  means  mud — there  was 
built,  at  the  cost  of  two  hundred  thousand  lives, 
the  lives  of  serfs  converted  into  masons  and  har- 
ried there  to  death,  the  town  of  Petersburg,  vast 
and  boreal,  where  art  congealed  into  tasteless 
edifices,  dreary  palaces,  empty  streets;  a  city 
with  a  heart  of  stone,  a  plaster  body  and  ex- 
tremities  of   rotten  wood. 

In  Petersburg,  Peter  made  himself  emperor, 
made  himself  pontifex  maximus.  Asiatic  abso- 
lutism, crowned  long  since,  then  was  mitred. 
The  patriarch  had  died.  Assembled  prelates 
asked  him  to  appoint  a  successor.  "I  have," 
he  told  them.  "I  have  appointed  myself."  Lord 
temporal,  lord  spiritual,  the  Antichrist  was  pope. 
Besides,  why  not?  The  Russias,  all  of  them, 
everything  and  everybody  in  them,  were  as  thor- 
oughly his  as  the  coat  on  his  back.  "I  will  give 
Russia  to  whom  I  see  fit,"  the  grandfather  of 
the  terrible  Ivan  unselfishly  said.  Peter  would 
not  merely  have  said  it,  he  would  have  done  it. 
He  lacked  the  time.  A  laundress,  handed  by  a 
pastrycook,  stepped  into  his  shoes. 

Louis  Napoleon  married  the  granddaughter  of 
a    publican.       Petrus    Maximus    married    the 


Peter  the  Great  69 

daughter  of  a  serf.  After  the  manner  of  an 
emperor  who  is  above  the  law,  he  married  her 
without  becoming  divorced  from  a  princess, 
Eudoxia  Lapoukhin,  already  his  wife.  In  the 
story  of  the  princess  there  is  drama.  In  the 
story  of  the  empress  there  is  myth. 

The  property  of  a  trooper,  she  passed  side- 
wise  and  upward  to  Peter  who,  for  her  imme- 
diate favours,  gave  her  a  ducat.  A  ducat  to 
the  trull  to  whom  he  afterward  gave  a  crown! 
At  the  time,  she  had  no  name.  Peter,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  ducat,  gave  her  one.  He  called  her 
Katinka,  also  Katierinouchka,  a  tender  diminu- 
tive which  history  severely  revised.  Histori- 
cally, she  became  Catherine  I. 

In  her  spiral  ascent  she  reached  Menchikov, 
an  ex-pastrycook  whom  Peter  had  picked  up  in 
the  street.  Peter  made  him  his  mignon,  then 
his  minister.  When  Peter  was  afar,  Menchikov 
ruled  for  him.  When  he  was  farther,  Menchi- 
kov ruled  alone.  Tt  was  he  who  gratified  Peter 
with  the  lady  of  the  ducat  and  the  crown. 

The  Margravine  of  Baireuth,  who  saw  her, 
said  she  was  short,  huddled,  tanned,  completely 
lacking  in  looks,  dignity,  grace;  dressed  in  a 
gown  covered  with  dirt  and  embroidery,  and 
so  tricked  out  with  medals,  necklaces,  gewgaws, 
that  she  jingled  like  a  mule. 


;o  The  Imperial  Orgy 

She  had  her  charms  though,  a  trooper's  thirst, 
the  ability  to  carry  her  liquor  like  a  boiar  and 
a  skill,  which  no  trainer  has  acquired,  the  art  of 
taming  a  gorilla.  In  her  hands  a  madman  was 
putty.  Peter  in  a  rage  was  a  fiend  in  a  fury. 
Katinka  cajoled,  commanded  and  calmed  the 
brute.  She  lulled  him  to  sleep.  When  he  awoke 
the  access  had  passed.  So  are  beasts  and  despots 
won. 

But  not  detained.  Peter  had  a  nostalgia  for 
mud,  a  homesickness  which  Katinka  shared. 
Any  woman,  provided  she  were  ugly  and  a  slat- 
tern, could  win  him  and  Katinka,  empress  and 
entremetteuse,  saw  to  it  that  he  was  supplied, 
not  neglecting  to  provide  for  her  own  amuse- 
ments, gaieties  at  which  Peter  did  not  even  shrug 
his  shoulders,  except  once. 

The  man,  a  good-looking  young  fellow, 
brother  of  one  of  Peter's  light  o'  loves,  was 
chamberlain  in  Katinka's  suite.  The  position 
involved  duties,  among  others  that  of  listening 
to  her.  In  listening,  he  replied.  The  conver- 
sation was  overheard  and  Peter  informed.  Ordi- 
narily, the  information  would  not  have  interested 
him,  but  the  anonymous  letter  which  conveyed 
it,  stated  that  the  two  were  conspiring  against 
his  life. 

The  gorilla  sprang  at  the  chamberlain  who, 


Peter  the  Great  71 

at  sight  of  him,  fainted.  When  he  recovered, 
Peter  had  also.  Considerately,  sympathetically, 
with  a  show  of  deep  affection,  Peter  assured  him 
that  he  was  sorry,  very  sorry,  but  he  would  have 
to  have  him  killed. 

The  theatre  was  prepared.  The  avid  crowd 
assembled.  Peter  took  Katinka  to  see  the  show. 
They  went  there  in  a  sleigh.  The  day  was  polar 
but  clear.  Katinka  remarked  about  it.  That 
was  all.  But  on  her  console  that  night,  she 
found  her  lover's  head. 

What  turpitudinous,  or  merely  horrible  re- 
prisals he  meditated  for  her,  one  may  surmise 
and  never  know.  Death,  whom  he  had  so  con- 
tinuously beckoned  for  others,  took  him  by  the 
ear.    Et  ainsi  finit  l'histoire  de  Barbe-Bleue. 

That  was  when  Katinka  was  empress.  An- 
teriorly she  had  children,  two  in  particular,  Ann 
and  Elisabeth,  one  of  whom  reigned  over  happy 
and  holy  Russia.  But  Eudoxia  the  Forsaken, 
also  had  a  child,  Alexis  the  tsarevitch. 

Peter  hated  them  both.  They  represented  the 
past.  By  way  of  contrast,  Katinka  was  the  New 
Woman  whom  Peter,  without  going  far  but  low, 
had  found  and  finding  made  empress.  The 
paradox  of  the  performance  was  its  inducement. 
In  its  vulgarity  was  its  charm.     Peter  had  an- 


72  The  Imperial  Orgy 

other  in  reserve  that  was  to  eclipse  it,  but  only 
in  horror. 

To  approach  the  latter  adequately  requires  a 
nearer  understanding  of  Katinka's  primitive 
soul.  The  slatterns  with  whom  Peter  amused 
himself  meant  nothing  to  her.  But  Eudoxia 
was  very  offensive.  Eudoxia  was  noble,  she  was 
tsaritsa,  she  was  a  saint,  or,  if  not  a  saint,  in  the 
convent  where  Peter  had  put  her,  she  resembled 
one.  The  insolence  of  it!  A  bucket  of  mud! 
The  bucket  was  raised,  the  mud  was  thrown. 
Katinka  fastened  a  lover  and  a  conspiracy  on  her. 

The  conspiracy  was  a  plot  to  seize  the  throne, 
put  the  tsarevitch  there  and  abolish  the  reforms. 
It  was  highly  imaginative.  None  the  less  Eu- 
doxia admitted  it,  admitted  the  lover,  admitted 
everything.  Beforehand  she  was  knouted.  Un- 
der the  knout  even  a  saint  may  admit  no  mat- 
ter what.  Glebov,  the  lover,  an  officer  and  a 
gentleman,  denied  everything.  The  rack  could 
extract  nothing  from  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  dozen  convent  nuns  said  whatever  the  lash  told 
them  to  say.     The  evidence  was  complete. 

Eudoxia  was  sent  to  another  convent  and  Gle- 
bov to  the  theatre.  At  the  four  corners  of  the 
stage  were  amputated  heads.  About  it  were  fifty 
corpses.  There  Glebov  was  impaled.  On  that 
day  the  cold  was  extreme.     In  order  that  he 


Peter  the  Great  73 

might  endure  the  torture  as  long  as  possible, 
he  was  bundled  in  furs.  During  it,  Peter  gloat- 
ingly approached.     Glebov  spat  in  his  face. 

Previously  a  drama  occurred  that  has  never 
been  properly  told  and  now  never  can  be.  The 
proper  telling  would  require  the  collaboration 
of  iEschylus  and  Michelet.  Here,  in  cobweb, 
is  the  outline. 

From  the  circles  of  terror  that  Peter  radiated, 
Alexis  shrank.  Otherwise,  brains  and  energy 
deducted,  he  was  Peter's  son.  His  tastes  were 
low.  He  liked  drink  and  common  women. 
Apart  from  that,  he  was  inoffensive  and,  after 
the  manner  of  the  inoffensive,  he  was  ineffective. 

Peter  always  effective  and  equally  offensive, 
eyed  him.  What  would  become  of  the  throne 
and  Russia  when  both  were  his?  To  sit  on  a 
throne  cannot  be  difficult.  To  remain  there  pre- 
supposes strength.  Alexis  had  none.  To  sup- 
ply it,  Peter  bullied  him  as  he  bullied  every- 
body, frightened  him  as  he  frightened  all.  He 
draped  the  boy  from  palace  to  shambles,  from 
a  honeymoon  to  war.  In  the  same  manner  that 
he  had  put  mettle  into  sheep,  he  tried  to  put 
force  into  dough.  Failing,  he  exhorted.  Fail- 
ing in  that,  he  threatened.  Again  he  failed.  The 
hoy  had  gone. 

The  year  before  he  had  married  a  German 


74  The  Imperial  Orgy 

girl.  The  marriage  was  a  precedent.  Every 
Russian  sovereign,  except  the  third  Alexander, 
who  married  a  Dane,  followed  that  lamentable 
example.  The  girl  whom  Alexis  married  was 
Charlotte  of  Wolfenbuttel.  Her  sister,  wife 
of  the  Austrian  emperor,  was  the  mother  of  a 
girl,  afterward  Maria  Theresa.  Charlotte  be- 
came the  mother  of  a  son,  afterward  Peter  II. 
It  is  said  that  just  before  the  latter's  birth,  Alexis 
kicked  her.  It  may  be  true.  Peter's  court  was 
a  morgue.  The  amenities  were  not  observed 
there.  But  the  classics  were  taught.  One 
learned  how  to  suffer  and  how,  too,  to  disappear. 
Charlotte  died  and  was  buried.  Or  so  at  least 
it  was  announced. 

Charlotte  lacked  beauty.  Instead  she  had  the 
sentimental  form  of  German  sentiment  which 
was  later  known  as  schwarmerei.  An  officer 
tapped  at  her  heart.  The  green  savannahs  of 
the  south,  the  bayous  of  Louisiana,  called  and 
beckoned.  They  got  away,  went  there,  loved 
there,  lived  there,  left  there  to  go  their  separate 
paths,  one  of  which  led  Charlotte  to  Paris,  where 
she  lived  on  an  allowance  served  to  her  by  her 
niece,  Maria  Theresa. 

After  Charlotte's  death,  the  Varietes  pro- 
duced a  play  of  which  she  was  the  heroine.  It 
was  called  Madame  Peterhof.     The  play  an- 


Peter  the  Great  75 

noyed  Catherine  the  Greater.  Severely  she  re- 
marked:— "Everybody  knows  that  the  princess 
died  here  of  consumption." 

A  French  wit  took  it  up.  "Everybody  knows 
that  your  husband  died  of  apoplexy." 

Before  Charlotte's  fantasia  began,  Alexis  had 
left  her.  He  fled  from  the  morgue  in  disguise. 
Years  earlier,  Peter  had  also  fled  in  disguise. 
He  fled  to  escape  his  ignorance.  Alexis  fled  to 
escape  that  ignorance  which  still  persisting  made 
Peter  blind  to  the  fact  that,  potent  though  he 
were,  for  the  power  he  misused  he  would  render 
account,  not  to  a  recording  angel  perhaps,  but 
to  himself.  In  Avitchi,  the  plane  that  the  very 
vile  enter  when  they  have  passed  from  here,  the 
penalty  of  the  damned  consists  in  beholding 
what  they  have  done.  Here  they  may  have 
lacked  a  conscience,  they  acquire  one  there;  ac- 
qui  re,  it  may  be,  two  of  them.  If  there  is  a  word 
of  truth  in  what  occultism  tells  of  that  plane, 
Peter  must  have  acquired  three  consciences,  six, 
a  dozen.     He  needed  them  all. 

At  the  time  he  had  none  whatever.  Katinka 
had  none  either,  but  she  had  just  had  a  child. 
Maternity  prompting,  she  prompted  Peter. 
Alexis  was  invited  to  become  a  monk.  Alexis 
agreed.  He  had  to  agree.  He  had  no  choice. 
But  then  the  cowl  is  not  nailed  to  the  head. 


76  The  Imperial  Or^ry 

Peter  gone,  he  could  discard  it,  ascend  the  throne 
and  abolish  the  reforms.  The  reforms  meant 
little  to  Katinka,  but  the  throne  meant  all.  It 
was  in  these  circumstances  that  she  fastened  on 
Eudoxia  a  conspiracy  which  involved  Alexis. 
Peter  would  have  killed  him.  Before  he  could, 
Alexis  had  gone. 

At  once  the  magic  circles  of  terror  expanded. 
Peter  was  seeking  him,  willing  him  back. 

Furtively  the  boy  crouched  and  scurried. 
With  him,  crouching  and  scurrying  also,  was  an- 
other boy  whom  he  called  his  page.  The  de- 
scription shows  imagination.  The  boy  was  a 
girl  and  a  serf  wtiom  he  had  garnered,  as  Peter 
gathered  Katinka,  on  the  backstairs  of  life.  Her 
name  was  Euphrosine.  She  was  a  Finn  and 
looked  it.  She  had  the  expression,  slightly  best- 
ial, that  Finns  display.  Alexis  loved  her.  The 
little  animal  enraptured  this  lad  in  whose  life 
raptures  had  been  scant.  Together  they  got 
down  to  Vienna  where  they  hid  and  dreamed. 
But  that  is  an  exaggeration.  Alexis  dreamed 
dreams  which  Euphrosine  dreamed  for  him — 
Peter  dead,  the  abolition  of  the  reforms,  Alexis 
tsar,  Euphrosine  empress! 

As  for  that  final  touch,  why  not?  What  had 
Katinka  been?  Longly  the  boy  discussed  the 
dreams  which,  ambrosia  to  her,  were  nectar  to 


Peter  the  Great  77 

him,  but  on  her  account  only.  Left  to  himself, 
his  dream  would  have  been  a  country  boiar's  ex- 
istence, quiet,  sensual,  drunken. 

But  the  flaming  circles  were  contracting  and 
they  fled  again,  this  time  to  Naples  where  Peter's 
huntsmen,  who  for  a  year  and  a  day  had  been 
stalking,  quarried  them.  The  shudder  that 
shook  Alexis  then  was  iEschylean.  Yet  how 
needlessly!  There  was  a  letter,  very  reassuring, 
from'  Peter.  Alexis  had  only  to  return ;  every- 
thing would  be  forgiven,  his  father's  tenderness 
restored. 

Peter  added: — "If  you  refuse,  I,  as  your 
father,  will  curse  you  and,  as  your  sovereign, 
condemn." 

On  reaching  Vienna,  Alexis  had  gone  to  the 
emperor.  Charles  VI.  was  his  brother-in-law. 
The  tenuous  bond  appealed.  Charles  promised 
to  look  after  him  and,  when  Alexis  fled  to  Na- 
ples, he  told  the  viceroy  there  to  have  an  eye  on 
him  also.  But  Peter,  who  knew  what  he  wanted 
and  knew,  too,  how  to  get  it,  was  massing  troops. 
The  viceroy  did  not  want  war, 'nor  did  Charles. 
When  Alexis  in  his  terror  invoked  the  one,  then 
the  other,  they  threw  him  to  the  dogs.  Alexis 
might  still  have  escaped.  But  Euphrosine  who 
expected  to  be  another  Katinka  and  to  replace 


78  The  Imperial  Orgy 

her,  persuaded  him  to  bargain  that  Peter  should 
consent  to  their  marriage. 

Tenderly  Peter  yielded.  Only,  in  view  of 
tsaral  customs  and  Alexis'  rank,  the  marriage 
must  be  solemnised  in  Moscow. 

Off  then  they  went  under  guard  of  that  tender 
father's  huntsmen,  a  guard  that,  for  Alexis  at 
least,  was  never  relaxed  until  that  tender  father's 
will  was  done. 

In  Moscow,  in  the  great  hall  where  the  terri- 
ble Ivan  throned,  the  terrific  Peter  questioned. 
Alexis,  shaken  and  swooning,  had  nothing'to  say 
except  that  he  was  a  devoted  son.  It  was  a  lie, 
one  which,  no  doubt,  the  Lords  of  Karma  remit- 
ted. 

Then  came  the  turn  of  Euphrosine,  a  chance 
for  the  antique  virtues,  the  display  of  Cornelian 
traits.  Not  a  bit  of  it.  The  little  trull,  whose 
ambitions  had  been  privately  disabused,  un- 
wound the  thread  of  her  lover's  dreams — tsar- 
dom  and  the  reforms  abolished! 

Face  to  face  with  Alexis,  eye  to  eye  as  it  is 
expressed  in  the  Muscovite  code,  she  was  sen- 
tencing him  to  death.  He  knew  it,  yet  more  pro- 
foundly afflicted  by  the  treachery  of  the  creature 
whom  he  still  adored  than  by  any  torture  that 
his  father  could  inflict,  he  collapsed. 

Peter  was  most  gracious  to  the  skirted  Judas. 


Peter  the  Great  79 

He  gave  her  a  dowry  and  married  her  to  an  offi- 
cer with  whom,  it  is  said,  she  lived  very  happily. 

In  the  eyes  of  gods  that  see  and  foresee,  Alexis 
fared  better.     He  was  murdered. 

On  that  day  the  stage  was  bare.  The  usual 
properties,  the  red  carpet,  the  black  draperies, 
the  knout,  the  rack,  the  knife,  the  block,  the  axe, 
these  things  wrere  absent.  The  theatre  was  clos- 
ed. The  blood  of  kings  is  sacred.  A  tsarevitch 
could  not  be  butchered  to 'make  a  Russian  holi- 
day. 

In  a  cellar  beneath  a  cellar,  a  pillared  vault 
lit  by  torches  that  were  sometimes  human,  Alexis 
was  beaten  into  insensibility,  drenched  with 
salted  water,  revived,  beaten  again,  longly  torn, 
considerably  burned,  killed  thoroughly. 

Peter,  twitching  neurotically,  biting  and 
moistening  his  lips,  heard  his  son's  shrieks, 
watched  him  die.  Whether  he  delivered  the 
usual  post-mortem  lecture,  history  does  not  say. 
What  she  does  say  is  that  on  the  morrow,  which 
was  the  anniversary  of  Pultowa,  he  laughed, 
danced  and  made  merry. 

Nero  killed  his  mother.  Her  crime  was  in 
giving  him  birth.  But,  monster  though  he  were, 
the  monstrosity  of  his  own  crime  haunted  him. 
Ivan  who,  in  monstrosity,  was  his  equal,  killed 
his  son  and  wept.  Alessandro  Borgia,  their  peer, 


80  The  Imperial  Orgy 

assembled  the  consistory,  beat  his  breast,  vomited 
his  incests,  purged,  or  tried  to  purge,  his  hide- 
ous soul.  Peter,  more  monstrous  than  those 
three  monsters,  killed  his  son  and  made  merry. 
But  that  is  not  his  epitaph. 

In  his  contempt  of  every  decency,  in  the  edicts 
with  which  he  changed  the  status  of  things,  in  his 
obliteration  of  national  customs,  he  assassinated 
the  ideal.     That  is  his  epitaph. 

In  constructing,  he  undermined.  In  correct- 
ing, he  corrupted.  Russia's  rottenness  proceed- 
ed from  his  knout;  her  anarchy,  from  his  auto- 
cracy. 

Peter  garroted  the  past;  already  Ivan  had 
strangled  the  future — dual  felonies  that  put  Rus- 
sia in  a  sociological  fourth  dimension,  a  plane 
abnormal,  apart,  where  lurked  and  brooded  the 
forces  elemental  that  were  to  scatter  the  eagles, 
destroy  the  state,  startle  the  world. 

Peter  and  Ivan  were  the  obstetricians  of  anar- 
chy's posthumous  accouchement,  though  proba- 
bly long  before,  on  spheres  beyond  our  ken,  it 
was  pre-ordered  that  they  should  be.  After 
the  manner  of  geological  transformations  that 
seem  cataclysmic  but  which  are  beneficent,  prob- 
ably they  were  the  gestators  of  a  Russia  yet  to 
be. 


IV 

IMPERIAL  SABLES 

PETER  knouted  his  wife,  killed  his  son,  be- 
headed his  mistress.  He  was  a  great  man. 
After  the  funeral,  opera  bouffe.  On  the 
throne  sat  a  laundress,  put  there  by  a  pastrycook. 

At  no  time,  anywhere,  except  in  Haiti,  has 
there  been  anything  as  impudent.  From  a  Hai- 
tian revolution  a  slave  emerged  emperor.  The 
slave  was  Soulouque.  He  could  not  read,  he 
could  not  write.  But  he  could  make  his  mark 
and  he  did  and  a  very  dirty  one.  The  laundress 
was  quite  as  scholarly.  Balzac  planned  a  play 
about  her  and  gave  it  up.  It  was  too  much  for 
him.  Previously,  Gretry  presented  her  in  an 
opera.  The  colouring  of  the  score  was  as  suited 
to  her  as  a  piano  is  to  a  kitchen.  Perhaps  only 
Offenbach,  who  turned  melody  into  a  strumpet, 
could  have  succeeded  with  her.  In  that  case 
and  by  comparison,  the  Grande  Duchesse  de 
Gerolstein  would  be  opera  seria. 

Peter's  reign  was  a  perpetual  martyrology. 
The  reign  of  his  widow  was  an  uninterrupted  de- 

8l 


82  The  Imperial  Orgy 

bauch.  The  one  modern  parallel  is  Rabelais' 
vastes  lippees.  Miraculously  the  empire  per- 
sisted, its  might  increased.  In  conditions  prac- 
tically identical  the  same  phenomenon  occurred 
in  Rome.  But  the  circumstances  of  the  Latin 
miracle  are  clearer  than  the  Slav.  Russia  lack- 
ed what  Rome  possessed,  a  Suetonius  to  describe, 
a  Tacitus  to  judge.  To  fill  the  picture  there  is 
little  else  than  the  dispatches  of  foreign  legates. 
In  one  of  these  dispatches  the  government  is 
called  a  chaos  and  the  court  a  bordel. 

Death  in  taking  Peter  by  the  ear,  took  him  so 
abruptly  that  he  had  no  time  to  appoint  a  suc- 
cessor. Legally,  if  the  term  had  any  meaning 
and  it  had  none,  the  indicated  heir  was  his  grand- 
child, the  son  of  the  murdered  Alexis,  or,  in  de- 
fault of  the  latter,  an  illegitimate  daughter,  or 
else  a  more  legitimate  niece.  The  complica- 
tions that  these  people  subsequently  effected 
would  be  farcical  were  it  not  for  the  tragedies 
that  ensued.  But  after  the  good  old  Roman 
fashion,  in  prevention  of  any  complications  and 
while  Peter  was  still  rattling  at  death,  Katinka 
subventioned  the  pretorians.  With  the  guards 
behind  her,  the  rest  was  easy  and  Menchikov, 
who  had  superintended  the  subventioning,  at- 
tended to  that. 

Menchikov  entered  history  from  the  gutter, 


Imperial  Sables  83 

Katinka  from  a  wash-tub.  The  daughter  of  Li- 
vonian  serfs,  she  was  fat,  coarse  and  a  laundress. 
During  the  siege  of  a  tottering  town,  where  she 
practised  her  genteel  vocation,  she  got  (from 
under  the  crashing  walls  and  crawled  in  among 
Peter's  troopers.  One  of  them  took  her,  beat 
her,  turned  her  over  to  a  sergeant,  who  passed 
her  up  to  a  lieutenant,  from  whom  she  passed  to 
a  captain.  From  him,  on  the  escalator  of  fate, 
she  reached  Menchikov,  who  gave  her  to  Peter, 
who  gave  her  a  ducat  and  added  a  crown. 

Inconvenient  preludes  deducted,  there,  retold, 
would  be  the  tale  of  the  darky  beggar-maid  and 
the  African  king  Cophetua,  were  it  not  that  the 
negress  did  not  live  to  reign  and  the  laundress 
did. 

Katinka,  Peter  called  her,  for  he  had  to  call 
her  something  and  she  had  no  name  of  her  own. 
In  spite  of  which  and  with  no  other  imaginable 
attraction  than  the  manner  in  which  she  washed 
soiled  linen,  this  wench  who  had  sprung  from 
the  mud  and  who  fell  back  there,  became  Cath- 
erine I.,  Autocrat  of  All  the  Russias.  There  is 
no  parallel  for  that,  even  in  mythology. 

In  an  old  print,  Peter  is  shown,  looking  up 
from  a  table  covered  with  dishes  and  bottles, 
while  Menchikov  leads  the  lady  in.  The  pic- 
ture is  suggestive  and  probably  exact.    But  Men- 


84  The  Imperial  Orgy 

chikov  after  leading  her  in  did  not  back  himself 
out.  For  a  year  and  a  day  she  remained  the 
property  of  both. 

There  is  no  immaculate  history.  If  there 
were  it  would  relate  to  a  better  world.  The 
maculacy  of  these  people  exceeds  the  powers  of 
decent  prose.  None  the  less  it  has  been  a  sub- 
ject of  wonder  that  an  emperor  could  have  gone 
the  extravagant  length  of  marrying  a  laundress. 
Perhaps  the  extravagance  was  the  incentive.  In 
Peter's  mind,  and  he  had  one,  the  marriage  may 
have  served  to  convey  the  expression  of  his  su- 
preme contempt  for  everybody  and  everything. 
It  is  difficult  to  imagine  how  he  could  have  made 
it  more  emphatic.  But  apart  from  that  snap  of 
the  finger,  there  was  another  reason,  one  already 
indicated  and  perhaps  more  profound.  The  de- 
mon that  he  was  she  could  transform  into  a 
child.     On  his  horrible  soul  she  poured  balm. 

Behind  the  balm  was  a  gold  mine.  In  the 
perpetual  funeral  that  Peter  conducted,  she  in- 
terceded. At  her  prayers,  penalties  were  remit- 
ted. Those  prayers  she  sold.  For  the  interces- 
sion she  was  paid.  Boiars  sentenced  for  a  yes 
or  a  no  to  the  scaffold,  sent  her  bags  of  coin. 
Their  pardon  followed.  The  bags  were  many 
and  in  time  very  useful.     It  was  with  them  that 


Imperial  Sables  85 

she  subventioned  the  pretorians  who,  Peter  gone, 
secured  for  her  the  throne. 

In  these  enterprises  she  was  prompted  and 
aided  by  Menchikov  who,  like  her,  could  neither 
read  nor  write.  He  was  otherwise  educated.  In 
the  hard  school  of  a  harsh  court,  and  previously 
in  the  training  camp  that  the  gutter  is,  he  had 
learned  how  to  want  and,  what  is  superior,  how 
to  get  what  he  wanted.  Originally  apprentice 
in  a  sweetshop,  Peter  picked  him  up  in  the 
street,  debauched  him  and,  afterward,  made  him 
prince  of  the  empire,  a  Slav  grandee  with  titles 
by  the  yard,  lord  of  domains  of  which  the  enum- 
eration would  fill  a  page. 

The  meal  was  insufficient.  His  appetite  grew 
as  he  ate.  A  rapacious  brute  with  a  strapping 
figure  and  a  bold  and  fumbling  eye,  he  wanted 
the  throne  and  got  it;  nearly,  that  is,  for  Peter 
gone  he  was  practically  tsar  and,  when  Katinka 
had  followed  her  gorilla,  he  was  regent.  Nor 
was  that  enough  and  reasonably  perhaps  since 
regency  is  not  heritable  or  even  permanent. 
Katinka's  successor  was  Peter's  grandson,  then  a 
boy,  and  that  boy  he  determined  should  marry 
his  daughter.  Meanwhile  he  filled  his  pockets, 
already  replete,  stuffing  them  with  gigantic  con- 
fiscations, becoming  in  the  process  despotic  as 
Peter,  greedy  as  Ivan,  with — what  unfortunately 


86  The  Imperial  Orgy 

both  of  them  missed — destitution  for  climax  and 
Siberia  for  finale.  But  no,  that  was  not  the  end. 
After  being  prince,  generalissimo,  regent,  the 
scoundrel  became  sublime.  Despoiled,  de- 
graded and  in  chains,  he  grew  fatl 

Prior  to  that  astounding  coup  de  maitre,  and 
immediately  after  he  had  placed  his  chattel  on 
the  throne,  it  was  his  custom  to  go  to  her,  before 
she  was  up,  and  ceremoniously  salute  her. 

"Ouray,  Katinka!    What  shall  we  drink?" 

The  question  decided,  he  fuddled  with  her 
and  whomever  she  had  at  her  side.  Generally, 
the  third  party  was  some  one  whom  he  had  never 
seen,  or  she  either,  until  the  day  before.  The 
high  and  puissant  lady  held  reviews  that  she 
might  make  her  choice.  Always  exclusive, 
usually  she  was  drunk.  Her  reign,  in  conse- 
quence, while  not  brilliant  historically,  socially 
was  delightful.  It  established  a  precedent 
which  her  immediate  successors  scrupulously 
observed. 

Among  these  was  her  daughter,  Elisabeth. 
Waliszewski  said  that,  in  following  her  mother's 
example,  she  used  her  own  bed  as  spring-board 
to  the  throne.  Apparently  that  is  true.  A  regi- 
ment of  her  lovers  put  her  there.  But  that  was 
after  she  had  already  refused  it  and  for  a  reason 
delicate,    perhaps,   but  commendable.     At  the 


Imperial  Sables  87 

time,  a  poet  compared  her  to  a  goddess  on  a 
cloud.  The  comparison  will  be  presently  ex- 
amined. The  only  comparison  that  could  fit 
her  mother  would  be  one  that  likened  her  to  a 
scullion  on  a  dais.  The  woman  was  nothing  else 
and  to  her  credit  did  not  pretend  to  be.  With 
no  fear  of  another  severed  head  confronting  her, 
gluttonously  she  reassembled  and  wallowed  in 
the  mud  from  which  she  had  sprung. 

At  fifty,  her  health  ruined  by  the  cups  of  dirt 
and  vodka  of  which  avidly  she  drank  the  deeper 
as  her  strength  decreased,  it  became  obvious  that 
she  would  soon  rejoin  her  gorilla  and  it  was  in 
these  circumstances  that  the  succession  was  of- 
fered to  Elisabeth  who,  for  a  reason  that  will  be 
recited,  refused. 

There  remained  her  sister,  who  had  married 
a  Holsteiner  that  nobody  wanted  and  whom 
everyone  got,  later  on  that  is,  in  the  shape  of  his 
whelp,  an  ignoble  poodle,  husband  of  Catherine 
the  Greater.  But  meanwhile  and  additionally 
there  was  the  son  of  the  murdered  Alexis,  an 
agreeable  lad  with  an  agreeable  minority  ahead 
of  him.  Katinka  appointed  him  tsar,  with  Men- 
chikov  for  regent. 

The  lad's  style  and  title  was  Peter  II.  Apart 
from  the  title,  his  style  was  good.  He  said,  or 
was  said  to  have  said,  that  Vespasian  would  be 


88  The  Imperial  Orgy 

his  model,  that  no  one  should  leave  his  presence 
depressed. 

Wide-eyed,  Petersburg  commented  and  mar- 
velled. Centuries  earlier,  the  astonishment  of 
Rome  had  been  as  vast.  Behind  Vespasian 
stretched  a  line  of  imperators  that  dispensed 
death  as  readily  as  Ivan  and  Peter.  But  they 
dispensed  it  with  an  urbanity  which  Muscovy 
never  knew.  Greece  humanised  the  Caesars, 
Tartary  brutalised  the  tsars.  The  Caesars  in- 
vited men  to  die.  The  invitation  was  civil.  It 
put  the  recipient  at  his  ease.  It  left  him  free 
to  choose  whatever  death  displeased  him  least. 
Occasionally,  to  fatten  fish,  a  slave  was  tossed  in 
a  pond.  To  flatter  the  plebs,  occasionally  a  sen- 
ator was  thrown  in  the  arena.  Now  and  then  a 
seer  might  be  punished  as  Epictetus  was,  by  hav- 
ing a  leg  broken.  But  to  a  Roman  citizen,  tor- 
ture was  never  applied.  Rome  assimilated 
many  an  orientalism  but  not  that,  and  it  was  in 
that  that  the  tsars  exceeded  the  Caesars. 

Petersburg  marvelled  consequently  at  the 
young  emperor's  benignity  which,  however,  did 
not  extend  to  Menchikov. 

Menchikov  was  his  master,  his  task-master, 
his  ruler,  his  regent,  his  autocrat,  precisely  as  he 
was  despot  of  all  the  Russias.  The  tyranny  of 
it  irked  the  young  tsar,  already  embarrassed  by 


Imperial  Sables  89 

Menchikov's  daughter,  a  young  woman  with  the 
cold  eyes  of  a  ghoul.  At  the  time,  Menchikov 
was  decorating  the  streets  with  columns  topped 
with  spikes.  On  the  spikes  were  heads.  From 
the  columns  rotting  corpses  hung. 

Peter  II.  ordered  them  removed.  With  that 
gesture  he  asserted  himself.  With  the  columns, 
Menchikov  fell.  Convicted  of  counterfeiting 
and  embezzlement,  petty  felonies  on  a  grand 
scale  that  he  must  have  committed  for  practise 
merely,  from  the  apex  of  power,  from  the  sum- 
mit of  wealth,  without  one  thing  to  his  name, 
except  the  clothes  on  his  back  and  the  chains 
on  his  feet,  he  went  to  the  great  white  house  of 
the  dead  that  Siberia  was  and  where,  superior 
to  destiny,  his  girth  increased.  That  was  su- 
perb. He  was  otherwise  magnificent.  Already 
he  had  founded  a  line,  unique  in  history,  a  race 
of  male  Pompadours. 

Petersburg,  savage  but  timorous,  relished  the 
tyrant's  vast  degringolage  and  savoured  the 
young  emperor's  promise. 

The  first  to  remind  him  of  it  was  his  aunt, 
Elisabeth.  Waliszewski  says  that  she  marred 
the  lad's  ingenuousness.  Another  Cherubino 
one  might  think.  But  the  melodious  problem, 
Che  cosa  e  amor?  he  had  already  investigated. 
More  Valois  than  Romanov,  he  was  a  Muscovite 


QO  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Henri  III.  He  had  all  the  feminisms  of  that 
king  who  contrived  to  be  queen.  From  his  aunt 
he  learned  nothing,  except  that  love  is  a  patholo- 
gical condition,  from  which  a  tsarevna's  con- 
valescence may  be  immediate.  Elisabeth,  too 
distrait  to  prolong  the  lesson,  abandoned  the  lad, 
who  became  engaged  to  a  Dolgorouki  girl,  with 
whose  brother,  Alexis,  he  had  entered  the  her- 
maphroditisms  of  Valois  nights. 

The  Dolgoroukis  were  highly  noble,  so  noble 
that  when,  long  later,  Alexander  II.  married  one 
of  the  house,  it  was  said,  and  very  correctly,  that 
the  princess  was  marrying  beneath  her.  The 
second  Alexander  was  not  a  Romanov.  The 
tribe  was  then  extinct.  The  last  of  the  litter 
was  Elisabeth's  daughter.  But  the  Dolgoroukis 
of  this  epoch  were  perhaps  less  fastidious  than 
they  afterward  became. 

At  the  ceremonies  of  the  betrothal,  and  very 
gorgeous  they  are  said  to  have  been,  a  ghost  ma- 
terialised. The  ghost  was  Eudoxia  Lapoukhin, 
Peter's  first  wife,  whom  he  had  knouted  and 
whose  lover  he  impaled.  From  a  convent  where 
ceaselessly  she  prayed,  she  came  in  the  anti- 
quated, barbaric  and  radiant  robes  of  a  Muscovy 
tsaritsa.  Psychic  from  long  vigils  and  very 
pale,  this  phantom  of  the  past  who,  during  the 
reign  of  a  trull,  had  been  too  lofty  to  descend, 


I'l  TER  II 


Imperial  Sables  91 

vacated  the  cloister,  reappeared  on  earth,  blessed 
her  grandson  and  silently,  sadly,  royally,  her 
glowing  robes  about  her,  drew  back  from  before 
a  drama  which,  it  may  be,  her  psychic  eyes  fore- 
saw. 

The  fiancee's  immediate  family  consisted  of 
her  father,  her  uncle,  and  her  brother  Alexis, 
with  whom  she  lived  in  a  great  palace  and  in 
equal  pomp.  The  girl  had  red  hair,  red  lips, 
a  cameo  profile,  passionate  and  proud,  but  not 
too  proud.  Those  lips  had  met  other  lips  and  so 
lingeringly  that  the  result  became  apparent. 

The  inconvenience  of  the  situation  was  com- 
plicated by  the  boy  tsar.  At  the  time  he  was 
living  in  the  Dolgorouki  residence.  There  he 
developed  typhoid.  It  was  thought  that  he 
would  die  and,  what  is  worse,  too  soon. 

An  effort  was  made  to  hasten  the  marriage. 
The  boy  was  delirious.  An  attempt  was  made 
to  have  him  sign  a  ukase  appointing  the  girl  his 
heir.  The  boy  was  unconscious.  An  expedient 
which  then  suggested  itself  was  to  put  the  girl 
in  his  bed  and  announce  that  he  had  honoured 
her  with  his  permission  to  be  there,  after  having, 
in  his  quality  of  pontifex  maximus,  performed 
the  marriage  himself.  There  was  still  another 
way,  perhaps  superior:  since  the  lad  could  not 
sign  the  ukase,  why  not  sign  it  for  him? 


92  The  Imperial  Orgy 

In  the  vast  palace,  in  the  dead  of  night,  fever- 
ishly these  people  turned  from  one  plan  to  an- 
other, uncertain  how  to  act,  certain  only  that  if 
they  did  not  act  and  act  immediately,  the  throne 
was  gone.  In  the  jeopardy  of  that,  the  ukase 
was  signed  and  not  a  moment  too  soon.  A  min- 
ute later  the  boy  emperor  was  dead.  It  was  the 
girl's  brother  who  signed  the  ukase.  Dropping 
the  pen,  he  drew  his  sword  and  rushed  out  with 
the  cry,  "Live  the  empress!" 

The  cry  found  no  echo.  The  forgery  was 
never  employed,  though,  through  what  conniv- 
ance is  uncertain,  it  was  discovered.  The  dead 
boy's  betrothed  went  to  Siberia.  En  route,  a  de- 
mand was  made  for  the  engagement-ring. 
Haughtily  she  extended  her  hand: — "Cut  it  off 
and  the  finger  with  it." 

Her  brother  went  to  the  scaffold.  There, 
while  his  arms  and  legs  were  being  broken,  he 
is  represented  as  reciting  a  prayer,  scanning  each 
word  from  beginning  to  end.  The  story  is  not 
improbable.  The  same  thing  occurred  in  Lon- 
don, at  Smithfield,  which  Mary  Tudor  turned 
into  a  Plaza  Mayor  and  where  she  exceeded  the 
Inquisition. 

Meanwhile,  the  nightmare  throne  was  vacant. 
Official  caretakers  dusted  it  and  wondered  about 
the  next  occupant.     In  wondering,  they  thought 


Imperial  Sables  93 

of  Peter's  nieces,  the  daughters  of  his  brother 
Ivan. 

Ivan  had  no  daughters.  Always  less  than  half 
a  man  and  never  more  than  half  a  sovereign, 
when  Peter  shoved  him  aside,  he  wandered,  a 
lost  soul,  into  the  country  where  he  lived  dis- 
mally, in  shabby  state  and  where  his  wife  had 
two  children,  both  girls,  neither  of  whom  was 
his,  yet  who,  none  the  less,  were  born  in  wedlock, 
a  formality  which  Peter,  in  regard  to  his  own 
daughters,  had  imperially  omitted.  The  more 
legitimate  nieces  remained.  One  had  married 
the  duke  of  Courland;  the  other  a  Mecklenburg 
prince.  This  other  will  appear  in  a  moment. 
The  Courlander  comes  first. 

Pink,  fat,  large  and  greasy,  she  was  familiarly 
known  as  Big  Nan,  except  to  Carlyle  who,  with 
easy  humour,  called  her  a  Westphalia  ham.  Her 
husband  died  the  day  after  the  wedding,  not  of 
delight,  but  of  the  nuptial  feast,  during  which 
he  gorged  and  gulped  gargantually.  For  after- 
course  there  were  pastries,  from  which  nude  pig- 
mies sprang  and  danced,  an  entertainment  that 
may  have  excited  his  further  and  fatal  efforts. 

Big  Nan  survived  and  became  empress,  a  role 
which  the  world  has  generously  forgotten.  But 
also  she  became  a  figure  in  a  romance  which  the 
stage  recalls. 


94  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Nan's  minor  part  occurred  at  Mittau,  the  cap- 
ital of  Courland  where,  as  duchess,  she  held 
court.  It  is  said  that  she  never  bathed.  In  her 
day,  Russian  women  of  position  washed  in  de- 
coctions of  roots  mixed  with  brandy  which  after- 
ward they  drank.  It  is  said  of  this  lady  that  she 
preferred  melted  butter.  It  is  also  said  that 
she  had  a  negligent  cook  hanged  where  she  could 
watch  his  last  wriggles.  At  table,  her  women 
were  beaten  before  her.  Their  screams  gave 
her  an  appetite. 

At  Mittau,  she  had  other  distractions.  She 
liked  gossip  and  tales  of  brigands.  These  at  an 
end,  she  turned  to  her  chamberlain,  whose  wife 
discreetly  retired. 

The  chamberlain,  Biihren,  who  afterward  var- 
iously mutilated,  exiled  and  killed  over  a  hun- 
dred thousand  people,  was  a  German.  Previ- 
ously there  had  been  another  German  and  it  was 
intermediately  that  a  romance  occurred  on 
which  Scribe  built  a  play  in  which  Rachel  ap- 
peared, not  as  Big  Nan,  but  as  Adrienne  de  Le- 
couvreur,  actress  and  chere  amie  of  Maurice  de 
Saxe. 

Men  do  not  dream  any  more  as  that  man  lived. 
The  son  of  Augustus  of  Poland  and  of  Aurore 
of  Koenigsmarck,  he  became  marshal  of  France, 
fought  on  every  battlefield  and  posthumously  in 


Imperial  Sables  95 

that  of  letters.  George  Sand  was  his  descend- 
ant. He  had  fought  at  Pultowa.  He  had 
fought  before,  he  fought  again,  in  a  series  of 
conflicts  which  amours  and  revels  distended. 
When  he  was  dead,  men  sharpened  their  swords 
on  his  tomb.  When  he  lived,  women  contended 
for  him.  Among  these  were  the  Duchesse  de 
Bouillon  and  Adrienne  de  Lecouvreur.  In  a 
duel  that  they  fought  for  him,  the  duchess  pois- 
oned the  actress. 

Mozart  had  not  then  appeared.  Moliere  had 
and  with  him  Don  Juan.  The  latter  pre-existed 
the  playwright.  Protean,  indefinite,  eternal,  the 
oldest  and  the  youngest  man  on  earth,  Maurice 
de  Saxe  was  one  of  his  many  avatars,  perhaps 
also  an  avatar  of  the  Cid.  Reprobate  and  pal- 
adin, the  story  of  his  conquests,  carried  from  one 
metropolis  of  pleasure  to  another,  reached 
Petersburg  and  passed  thence  to  Mittau,  where, 
a  troop  of  henchmen  at  his  heels,  but  always  gal- 
lant, he  came  to  claim  the  duchy. 

The  sinews  of  the  enterprise  had  been  fur- 
nished by  Adrienne.  It  used  to  be  said  that  a 
gentleman  may  receive  gifts  only  from  his  mis- 
tress and  his  king.  Adrienne,  all  in  all  for  her 
lover,  sold  her  jewels,  melted  her  plate.  It  was 
on  the  proceeds  that  the  beau  sabreur  appeared 
at  Mittau. 


96  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Immediately  Big  Nan  was  his.  In  addition, 
he  could  have  had  the  duchy.  In  addition  to 
the  duchy  he  could  have  had  an  empire.  Nan 
wanted  him  to  marry  her.  The  duchy  was  in 
his  hand,  the  duchess  in  his  arms,  the  empire  in 
her  pocket.  But  not  every  one  can  sup  on  West- 
phalia ham.  A  slice  or  two  sufficed.  Maurice 
took  to  reading  Don  Quixote,  a  pastime  in  which 
he  was  surprised  by  one  of  Nan's  ladies. 

At  the  time,  the  palace  was  dark.  It  was 
darker  when  the  surprise  ended.  Maurice  un- 
dertook to  carry  the  lady  to  her  own  apartment. 
On  the  way,  a  watchman  saw  them,  saw  rather 
what  he  imagined  was  a  two-headed  ghost, 
shrieked  with  fright  and  dropped  his  lantern. 
Maurice  kicked  at  the  lantern,  tried  to  extin- 
guish it,  slipped  in  the  effort  and  fell  with  the 
lady  on  the  watchman  who  shrieked  the  louder. 
A  door  opened.  It  was  Nan's.  She  threw  a 
glance  out,  followed  it  and  raised  the  lantern. 
A  page  of  history  turned.  It  was  in  turning  it 
that  Nan  consoled  herself  with  Biihren. 

Biihren  was  the  son  of  an  ostler,  a  circum- 
stance which  elucidates  a  contemporary  remark 
that  he  talked  to  horses  like  a  man  and  to  men 
like  a  horse.  Otherwise  he  was  of  the  Pompa- 
dour lineage  which,  founded  by  Menchikov, 
was  to  continue  on  to  Potemkin.    Casanova,  who 


Imperial  Sables  97 

met  him,  as  he  met  everybody,  says  that  he  was 
flnelooking.  So  is  a  vulture.  Nan  made  him 
duke,  changed  his  name  from  Buhren  to  Biron 
and,  with  enviable  imagination,  evolved  a  gene- 
alogy that  interrelated  him  with  one  of  the  first 
families  of  France.  When  the  head  of  that 
family  heard  of  it  he  laughed  and  asked: — 
"What  better  name  could  the  canaille  have 
chosen?"  But  all  that  was  insufficient  for  this 
German  who  could  not  speak  Russian  and  still 
less  French. 

Nan,  at  the  time,  was  empress.  Ignorant,  in- 
dolent and  cruel,  she  resembled  the  serpent 
painted  by  Raphael  that  had  a  woman's  head. 
Buhren  had  the  head  of  a  bird  of  prey.  Other- 
wise they  were  admirably  mated.  Both  pos- 
sessed that  dangerous  characteristic  which  stu- 
pidity is.  Nan,  in  creating  him  duke  of  Cour- 
land,  made  him  premier  of  Russia.  But  the 
Menchikov  lesson  taught  him  nothing  except 
the  impermanence  of  delegated  power.  By  way 
of  insurance  against  the  hazards  of  the  morrow, 
he  conceived  the  easy  expedient  of  marrying  his 
daughter  to  the  Holstein  whelp  whom  Catherine 
the  Greater  afterward  married  and  murdered. 
But  in  his  wheels  there  were  spokes,  put  there 
by  Ostermann  and  Munnich,  generals  who  had 
come  down  from  Peter,  and  who  had  plans  of 


98  The  Imperial  Orgy 

their  own  concerning  him  and  that  daughter  of 
his,  pleasant  plans  with  Siberia  among  them. 
Buhren,  meanwhile,  a  Pompadour  tsar,  was 
peopling  that  land,  sending  citizens  there  in 
droves  or,  more  expeditiously,  to  the  scaffold. 
The  orgy  appealed  to  him  vastly. 

The  court  then  was  charming.  Under  Peter 
it  had  been  a  morgue.  Under  Katinka,  an  as- 
signation house.  Nan,  with  Buhren  and  his  dis- 
creet wife  for  managers,  elevated  it  to  the  dig- 
nity of  a  tap-room.  "Here!"  a  chamberlain 
called  at  an  officer  who  neglected  to  get  drunk. 
"Don't  you  know  that  your  conduct  is  insolent? 
You  are  her  majesty's  guest." 

In  Peter's  day  the  court  was  bare.  In  Katin- 
ka's  it  was  filthy.  Under  the  Buhren  manage- 
ment it  became  an  oriental  cabaret,  glittering 
and  tawdry. 

On  a  throne  in  a  great  gaudy  room,  lolled 
Frau  Buhren,  duchess  of  Courland.  Hump- 
backed and  hideous,  she  was  royal.  The  robe 
she  wore  a  couturier  valued  at  a  hundred  thous- 
and roubles.  Her  jewels  were  worth  two  mil- 
lion. In  lolling,  she  smiled  and  very  fondly  at 
her  children  who,  in  their  romps,  threw  ink 
about.  Let  the  darlings  play!  With  whips  they 
lashed  the  boiars.    Who  ever  saw  such  dears? 

Adjacently    were    jesters,    dwarfs,    crippled 


Imperial  Sables  99 

princes  that  played  the  clown,  swarms  of  at- 
tendants in  all  the  costumes  of  all  the  Russias 
and  a  greater  swarm  of  Germans.  The  court 
was  German.  The  government  was  German. 
The  orgy  was  Teuton.  Only  the  boiars  con- 
verted into  clowns  and  cripples  were  Slav.  But 
clowns  can  think,  cripples  can  hate.  At  the  mo- 
ment, with  heads  that  shook,  uncertain  how  long 
they  would  own  them,  they  knelt.  Along  the 
walls,  in  gilded  cages,  were  nightingales,  larks, 
canaries,  thousands  of  them.  From  the  door- 
way, two  generals  peered  and  muttered. 

In  another  room  lay  Big  Nan.  The  tales  of 
brigands  that  she  used  to  like,  pleasured  her  no 
longer.  Biihren  had  made  her  live  them.  Be- 
side her,  the  vulture  perched.  Nearby  were 
three  other  Germans,  the  prince  and  princess  of 
Brunswick  and  their  child,  a  boy. 

The  princess,  daughter  of  the  duchess  of 
Mecklenburg,  was  Nan's  niece.  The  boy  was 
next  in  line.  In  the  drama  of  Russian  history, 
his  history  is  unique.  It  must  wait  on  the  ro- 
mance of  his  father  and  mother,  an  admirably 
assorted  couple  who  never  spoke.  A  grave  his- 
torian remarked  of  Louis  XV.,  qu'il  fit  a  sa 
fcmme  sept  enfants  sans  lui  dire  un  mot.  The 
Brunswick  pair,  equally  reserved,  were  less  pro- 
lific.    The  boy  sufficed. 


ioo  The  Imperial  Orgy 

The  girlhood  of  the  princess  had  been  var- 
iegated by  a  duo  with  a  man  named  Lynar. 
Why  he  consented  to  sing  with  her  seems  mys- 
terious. An  equivocal  young  person  with  classic 
inclinations,  she  was  plain,  vain  and  stupid. 
Presently,  as  a  result  of  the  duo's  lilt,  she  was 
married  to  an  imbecile.  Subsequently  this  boy 
was  born.  Big  Nan  being  childless,  the  happy 
family  was  invited  to  the  annex  of  Berlin  that 
Petersburg  had  become  and  where  the  mystery 
of  Lynar's  civility  was  dissolved.  About  the 
otherwise  avoidable  madchen  he  had  foreseen 
the  sables.  What  Biihren  was  to  the  aunt,  he 
might  become  to  the  niece  and,  as  it  happened, 
he  did. 

A  few  years  later,  the  greater  Catherine 
etched  him: — "A  fine  looking  fellow,  with  the 
dress  and  the  airs  of  a  fop,  I  hear  he  sleeps  in  a 
complexion  mask  and  boasts  of  eighteen  chil- 
dren." Catherine  added  details,  graphic  cer- 
tainly, but  not  in  conformity  with  present  taste. 
That  is  hardly  to  her  discredit.  Formerly,  pre- 
lates employed  in  the  pulpit  expressions  which 
to-day  a  coster  would  avoid. 

In  the  interim,  affairs  of  state  occurred.  Big 
Nan,  overcome  by  drink,  took  to  her  bed.  The 
extreme  unction  was  suggested.  "Don't  fright- 
en me,"  she  irritably  retorted.     But  death  was 


Imperial  Sables  101 

eyeing  her.  It  may  be  she  did  not  know  it. 
Biihren  did.  So  also  did  the  Brunswickers 
whose  complete  nullity  appealed  to  him.  Since 
their  boy  was  to  be  tsar,  he  saw  no  reason  why 
the  curtains  of  Nan's  alcove  should  not  be  mod- 
elled for  him  into  a  robe  of  sables.  He  pre- 
pared a  ukase  to  that  effect. 

"Do  you  want  to  be  regent?"  Nan  asked. 
Those  were  her  last  words.  She  signed  the 
ukase.     That  was  her  final  gesture. 

The  gesture  was  a  signal.  The  clowns  and 
cripples  who  could  think  and  hate  prepared  to 
act.  But  already  two  generals,  long  since  pre- 
pared, were  acting. 

It  had  been  Buhren's  ambition  to  be  regent. 
He  gratified  it  for  twenty-two  days  and  expiated 
it  for  twenty-two  years.  On  the  twenty-second 
night  of  his  regency,  his  daughter,  a  lass  quite 
as  lovely  as  her  discreet  mamma,  woke  to  sudden 
cries.  In  an  adjoining  room,  her  father,  half 
naked,  was  struggling  with  grenadiers  whom  the 
two  generals,  Ostermann  and  Munnich,  com- 
manded. Biihren,  knocked  on  the  head,  was 
carried  senseless  to  the  street,  where  his  wife 
and  daughter,  both  in  chemise,  were  carried  with 
him. 

The  next  day,  charged  with  having  attempted 
the  life  of  the  late  empress  by  taking  her  to 


102  The  Imperial  Orgy 

drive  in  the  rain,  he  and  his  started  for  a  prison 
which  Munnich  had  personally  designed  and 
which  later,  the  designer  occupied  with  him. 

It  was  Elisabeth  who  put  him  there  and  Oster- 
mann  also.  Meanwhile  the  little  palace  revolu- 
tiori  had  succeeded.  Nominally,  the  Brunswick 
woman  ruled. 

Ann  of  Mecklenburg  and  of  Brunswick  was 
as  vacuous  as  Big  Nan,  in  addition  to  being  more 
indolent.  With  weak  gestures  she  trailed  the 
sables  that  Nan  had  bedrabbled.  Perhaps  less 
Mecklenburg  than  Mytilene,  her  tastes,  such  as 
they  were,  were  exotic.  Apart  from  Lynar,  she 
had  companions  of  a  category  that  Brantome 
ignored  and  Kraft-Ebbing  described.  Through 
her  brief  paragraph  in  history,  she  moved  lan- 
guidly to  Lesbian  airs. 

To  Petersburg  that  mattered  little.  The 
woman's  regency  was  objectionable  but  not  at 
all  on  that  account.  The  reigns  that  preceded 
hers  had  inured  to  anything,  no  matter  what.  It 
was  the  deepening  German  atmosphere  that  an- 
noyed. The  woman  was  half  German  and  her 
child,  Ivan  VI.,  Mecklenburg  on  her  side  and 
Brunswick  on  his  father's,  was  German  to  the 
core.  There  was  some  one  else  who  was  not 
German,  some  one  who  was  Russian  through 
and  through.     But  also  there  was  the  scaffold. 


Imperial  Sables  103 

Subterraneanly  a  conspiracy  was  formed  that, 
silent  at  first,  confined  to  a  few,  presently  showed 
its  teeth.  One  night,  to  the  clatter  of  arms,  the 
Brunswick  woman  awoke.  Elisabeth  stood 
before  her. 


Q 


THE  NORTHERN  MESSALINA 

UINTILLIAN  said  that  history  and 
poetry  are  sisters.  He  was  dreaming. 
Yet  that  dream  of  his  Elisabeth  exem- 
plified. To-day  her  face,  her  figure,  her  reign 
are  vague.  In  the  great  penumbra  she  has 
greatly  faded.  Vers  libre  remain.  They 
tell  of  a  woman  who  beat  the  fat  Frederick 
to  his  knees,  nearly  crushed  the  tgg  from 
which  Bismarck  hatched  a  Kaiser,  and  whose 
many  loves  were  briefer  and  more  burning  than 
the  wick  of  her  alabaster  lamp.  They  tell  of  a 
war-woman  who  was  a  lady  of  pleasure. 

The  housemaids  of  history  have  tidied  her 
alcove,  burnished  her  morals  and  locked  the 
door.  Excellent  method.  Elisabeth,  who  had 
a  grain  of  humour,  would  have  enjoyed  it.  It  is 
quite  in  accordance  with  her  own  ideas  which 
she  entirely  neglected  to  observe.  If  she  had  a 
broom,  she  did  not  use  it  and  she  left  her  door 
wide  open.  To  look  in  on  her  is  not  good  man- 
ners.    Real  history  never  had  any. 

104 


The  Northern  Messalina  105 

Nor  had  she.  Ignorant,  irascible,  cruel  and, 
in  her  later  years,  always  drunk,  autocratically 
she  did  as  she  liked.  A  great  privilege,  it  was 
part  of  the  orgy,  the  best  part.  Without  it  the 
feast  would  have  had  no  savour,  the  wine  no 
taste.  It  enabled  her  and  the  rest  of  the  lot  to  do 
things  for  which  there  are  no  words  in  any  dic- 
tionary and  no  penalty  in  any  code. 

Lomonosov,  a  poet  of  her  day,  compared  her 
to  a  goddess  on  a  cloud.  Well,  yes,  perhaps. 
But  she  was  a  trifle  heavy  for  it.  The  earth  ap- 
pealed to  her  more  than  the  sky,  more  even  than 
the  throne  which  was  offered  to  her  and  which, 
for  a  delicate  reason,  she  refused.  Engaged  at 
the  time  in  a  fervent  amour,  she  feared  the  cere- 
monial would  interrupt  it.  A  young  woman  so 
retiring  was  bound  to  win  hearts  and  she  did  by 
the  regimentful.  Besides,  her  mind  was  as 
changeable  as  her  affections.  In  addition  she 
was  Peter's  daughter.  Over  and  above  all  she 
was  Russian. 

One  night,  a  corps  of  grenadiers,  laughing 
mightily  at  the  adventure,  carried  her,  laughing 
also,  to  the  palace,  where  she  pulled  the  regent 
out  of  bed,  sent  her  and  hers  to  the  devil  and,  in 
the  same  lively  manner,  ran  up  the  steps  of  her 
father's  throne. 

The  fashion   in  which  her  reign  began  must 


io6  The  Imperial  Orgy 

have  interested  Sardou.  During  the  Brunswick 
management,  during  that  also  of  Big  Nan,  many 
people,  but  two  in  particular,  had  been  thought- 
less enough  to  annoy  her.  The  two  she  ordered 
broken  on  the  wheel.  The  stage  with  its  red 
carpet  and  black  draperies  was  prepared.  Avidly 
the  crowd  assembled.  Munnich,  in  full  uni- 
form, a  scarlet  cloak  about  him,  a  smile  for  every 
one,  a  nod  to  those  he  knew,  gallantly  ascended 
the  steps,  threw  off  his  cloak,  partially  un- 
dressed and,  still  with  that  smile,  listened  while 
he  was  told  that  torture  had  been  commuted  to 
decapitation.  Then,  just  as  the  axe  was  raised, 
more  theatricals.     Instead  of  decapitation,  exile. 

To  the  crowd's  immense  disgust,  Ostermann 
was  treated  similarly.  Both  went  to  Siberia. 
Hundreds  followed  them.  The  hundreds 
became  thousands.  The  thousands  multiplied. 
Before  Elisabeth  died  she  recalled  them  all,  all 
that  still  lived  that  is,  except  two.  These  were 
women.  How  and  why  they  went  will  be  told 
in  a  minute. 

Elisabeth  was  very  beautiful.  She  knew  it 
and  it  delighted  her.  She  loved  life,  loved 
pleasure,  loved  her  beauty  best.  Time  had  the 
impertinence  to  touch  her.  Her  beauty  de- 
parted. At  that,  this  sovereign  whom  admira- 
tion had  lifted,  like  a  divinity,  to  the  skies,  could 


Illl    I  MPRESS  ELISAB1  III 


The  Northern  Messalina  107 

not,  as  a  mortal  might,  fall  from  them.  A  god- 
dess still,  she  disappeared. 

When  a  girl  and  a  beauty,  there  was  question 
of  her  becoming  queen  of  France.  The  idea, 
originally  Peter's,  Versailles  considered  and, 
other  things  being  equal,  a  Russian  instead  of  a 
Pole  might  have  been  the  thrice-blessed  wife  of 
Louis  XV.  But  Elisabeth  had  not  been  born 
in  the  pomps  of  matrimony.  It  was  afterward 
that  Peter  married  her  mother.  In  the  eyes  of 
legitimate  France,  Elisabeth  was  illegitimate. 
That  was  sufficient.  There  was  more.  Elisa- 
beth, who  even  as  a  lass  loved  life,  dressed  like  a 
man  and  hunted  hyenas  and  lovers. 

Her  first  affair,  a  Slav  eclogue,  was  with  a 
shepherd  whom  she  pursued  and  overtook.  Very 
presuming  of  him,  none  the  less.  To  teach  him 
the  respect  due  to  a  tsarevna,  his  tongue  was  cut 
out.  Along  the  tundras  of  the  Siberian  coast, 
thereafter  he  meditated  on  that  lesson. 

The  shepherd  was  succeeded  by  a  tenor,  the 
tenor  by  a  regiment.  Highly  temperamental, 
Elisabeth  changed  her  chosen  only  less  fre- 
quently than  her  costumes,  of  which,  in  the 
course  of  her  volatilely  voluptuous  reign,  she 
accumulated  nineteen  thousand,  together  with 
a  few  less  than  five  thousand  pair  of  shoes.  In- 
cidentally there  was  a  child.     About  Elisabeth 


108  The  Imperial  Orgy 

romance  clung.  About  the  child  there  is  trag- 
edy.    That  also  will  be  told  in  a  moment. 

In  the  long  illness  that  Russian  history  is,  the 
romance  of  the  woman  and  of  her  reign  relaxes. 
Set  between  the  hysteria  that  had  gone  and  the 
relapses  to  come,  the  pages  of  the  imperial  an- 
nals turn  to  airs  that  are  almost  blythe,  to  a  gaiety 
sickly  but  convalescent.  From  windows  that 
gave  to  the  south  and  west,  the  patient  beheld 
defeats  and  massacres.  The  defeats  were  those 
of  Frederick  the  Pseudo-Great;  the  massacres, 
those  of  Prussians.  Medicaments  like  these  in- 
vigourate.  Accompanying  them  were  gusts  of 
culture,  a  trifle  uncertain,  the  hesitant  preludes 
of  freer  life.  Heads  were  still  shaky.  They 
were  no  longer  cut  off  for  a  yes  or  a  no. 

These  restoratives  were  apprehensible  from 
the  upper  storeys  only.  Beneath  them,  the  soul 
of  the  nation,  narcotised  at  birth,  slept  restlessly. 
Sleep  was  Russia's  normal  condition.  No  Euro- 
pean nation  slept  longer.  Peter  shook  her, 
kicked  her  to  her  feet,  put  her  at  work.  Russia 
laboured  at  his  bidding,  toiled  beneath  his  lash, 
writhed  on  his  rack  and,  he  gone,  fell  asleep 
again.  Conscious  she  was  but  conscious  of  night- 
mare. She  knew  that  she  agonised  but  how  or 
why  she  could  no  more  tell  than  a  child  with  the 
croup.     The  subsequent  shrieks  of  the  Terror, 


The  Northern  Messalina  109 

the  amputations  of  the  austere  guillotine,  the 
festivals  and  convulsions  of  France,  passed  her 
unheeded.  Somnambulistic,  automaton,  hyp- 
notised by  absolutism's  basilisk  stare,  night  held 
her  and  continued  to  hold  her  until  the  Crimean 
war. 

The  shock  of  that  ignoble  scramble  stirred 
her.  From  her  cot  that  was  at  once  a  cage  and 
a  coffin,  she  showed  a  few  poisoned  fangs,  but 
only  to  have  them  drawn.  They  have  grown 
afresh  since  then.  Since  then,  from  being  af- 
frighted, she  frightened  the  world.  But  mean- 
while her  brain  was  still  heavy,  her  pulse  was 
slow.  She  suffered  without  knowing  why. 
Time,  the  great  pathologist,  was  occupied  else- 
where. Even  otherwise,  it  is  not  until  a  nation 
can  diagnose  her  own  maladies  that  the  indicated 
remedies  are  applied. 

They  were  not  applied  then.  On  the  upper 
storeys  of  the  hospital,  a  pale  daylight  fell.  Else- 
where, darkness  persisted.  In  the  isbas,  where 
even  vermin  starved,  serfs  cried  for  bread  and 
died.  In  the  schools,  problems  on  the  nature  of 
angels'  thoughts  were  anxiously  discussed.  In 
the  streets,  sudden  cutthroats  did  for  you  and 
vanished.  Yet  one  of  them,  Vanka  Ka'fn,  the 
tsar  of  cutthroats,  managed  to  be  quite  as  sur- 
prising   and    infinitely    more    poetic    than    the 


no  The  Imperial  Orgy 

anointed  bandits  with  whom  these  pages  deal. 
That  is  the  grave  inconvenience  of  history.  In 
writing  it,  the  historian  may  not  sing  the  kings  of 
the  highroad.  He  must  harp  of  the  great  car- 
nivora.  The  bestiarium  will  reopen  imme- 
diately. 

For  the  people,  in  those  days,  existence  was 
tragic.  For  the  boiars  it  was  gay.  Shackled 
by  Peter,  they  were  halt.  Under  Elisabeth  they 
could  move.  Provided  they  did  not  affront  the 
imperial  stare,  they  could  live.  In  this  epoch 
they  began  to.  About  them,  from  the  toil  of 
serfs,  wealth  had  been  accumulating.  Splen- 
didly they  squandered  it.  In  France,  red-heeled 
seigneurs  were  similarly  engaged.  There,  pres- 
ently, the  poor,  bled  to  death  to  defray  the  follies 
of  the  rich,  sent  in  their  bill.  History  calls  that 
bill  the  Terror.  In  Russia,  the  addition  took 
longer.  But  when  finally  it  was  presented,  the 
terror  that  resulted  reduced  that  of  France  to  the 
proportions  of  a  farandole.  It  assembled  all  the 
terrors  of  tsardom  and  turned  them  upside  down. 

Muscovite  follies  began  in  the  reign  of  this 
good  Queen  Bess.  To  encourage  them,  a  great 
novelty  had  been  introduced.  The  novelty  was 
champagne.  Other  novelties  followed:  pine- 
apples, Irish  hunters,  French  literature,  Italian 
music  and  the  parage  of  princely  display.    When 


The  Northern  Messalina  in 

a  gentleman  drove,  two  heiduques  and  ten  lack- 
eys accompanied  him.  If  he  took  snuff,  he  had 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  jewelled  snuff-boxes 
to  choose  from.  His  coats  were  gorgeous  and, 
in  the  court  of  Elisabeth,  his  existence  was  Paph- 
ian. 

For  the  court,  Elisabeth  built  the  Winter  Pal- 
ace, the  largest  in  Europe,  precisely  as  Bucking- 
ham is  the  ugliest  and  Versailles  the  least  com- 
fortable. 

Versailles  had  other  attributes.  In  that  El 
Dorado  of  gallantry,  vice  was  ennobled.  Created 
a  marquis,  it  acquired  a  dignity  ceremonial  and 
amusingly  pompous.  Gallantry,  which  is  the 
parody  of  love,  became  its  style  and  title.  Legit- 
imate and  royalist  as  the  king,  there  was  no 
hypocrisy  about  it.  It  was  cynical  but  not  per- 
verse. The  perverse  was  there  also,  but  hidden, 
veiled  by  gold  brocade,  buried  under  fleurs-de- 
lys. 

The  Winter  Palace  parodied  Versailles  as  gal- 
lantry parodies  love.  Lampsacene  hymns,  Les- 
bian songs,  the  rites  of  the  gods  of  the  cities  that 
mirrored  their  lunar  towers  in  the  Bitter  Sea, 
these,  the  ritual  of  halls  that  a  league  of  candles 
lit, made  up  in  fervourwhat  they  lacked  in  grace. 
The  fault  was  Peter's  who,  without  considering 


112  The  Imperial  Orgy 

the  preliminary  and  very  imperative  educational 
steps,  had  ukased  a  social  world  into  being. 

The  fault  was  not  regarded  as  such.  It  was  a 
sesame  to  the  cave  of  forbidden  fruit  and  re- 
sulted in  a  sans-gene  that  no  modern  court  has 
known,  even  behind  the  arras.  As  a  conse- 
quence, the  advent,  elevation  and  passing  of 
Elisabeth's  grenadiers — lads  of  the  moment  they 
were  called — young  men  lifted  from  the  bar- 
racks to  the  couch  of  imperial  amours,  consti- 
tuted a  parade  that  was  viewed  with  understand- 
ing, not  with  censure,  except  once.  Two  women 
presumed  to  sit  in  judgment.  That  was  a  serious 
matter.  The  beauty  of  one  of  the  women  ex- 
ceeded Elisabeth's.  That  was  more  serious 
still.     What  followed  is  horrible. 

The  women  were  taken  to  the  theatre.  On 
the  stage,  one  of  them,  the  Countess  Bestoujev, 
gave  the  executioner  a  handful  of  diamonds. 
The  lash  fell  lightly  on  her  back.  The  knife  bare- 
ly scratched  her  tongue.  The  other,  the  beauty, 
Countess  Lapoukhin,  screamed  and  fought  with 
the  man,  bit  his  hand,  resisted  him  as  best  she 
might.  He  tore  her  clothes  off  and,  before  ap- 
plying the  lash,  cut  her  tongue  out.  Then,  jeer- 
ing at  her  nakedness,  he  offered  the  bloody  mor- 
sel for  a  rouble.  He  turned  to  beat  the  beauty. 
She  had  fainted.     The  lash  revived  her.     Pres- 


The  Northern  Messalina  113 

ently  for  her  and  the  other  woman,  the  journey- 
to  Siberia  began.  Of  all  whom  Elisabeth  sent 
there,  these  two  only  she  neglected  to  recall. 

In  the  private  life  of  the  nobles  there  were 
incidents  equally  abominable.  A  woman  of  rank, 
angered  by  a  serf,  got  her  fingers  in  his  mouth 
and  tore  it  back  to  the  ears.  In  the  bedroom  of 
another  woman,  a  serf  lived  in  a  cage.  The 
serf  was  a  barber  and  the  woman  did  not  wish  it 
known  that,  when  loosened,  he  dyed  her  hair. 
Another  woman,  personally  and  unaided,  killed 
a  hundred  of  her  human  chattels.  Another 
woman — but  here  the  pen  balks.  Gautier  said 
that  the  inexpressible  does  not  exist.  Gautier 
did  not  live  in  eighteenth-century  Russia. 

In  sending  the  Brunswickers  to  the  devil, 
Elisabeth  directed  them  to  the  north,  from 
which,  years  later,  they  reached  Denmark,  minus 
the  boy  tsar.  Ivan  VI.  was  taken  from  them, 
brought  back,  put  in  one  prison,  then  in  another, 
though  where  and  in  what  prison  he  never  knew. 
No  one  was  allowed  to  tell  him.  It  was  for- 
bidden to  speak  to  him.  To  look  at  him  was  for- 
bidden. The  Iron  Mask  of  Russia,  for  twenty 
years  he  reigned  in  an  oubliette.  For  crown,  he 
had  cobwebs;  for  subjects,  spiders;  for  kingdom, 
a  cell. 

That  grandeur  was   excessive.     It  menaced 


114  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Elisabeth's.  To  annoy  her,  Frederick  threat- 
ened to  put  him  on  the  throne.  "I'll  chop  his 
head  off  first,"  Elisabeth  retorted.  More  finely, 
she  nearly  chopped  Prussia's.  In  the  interim 
she  forgot  Ivan.  What  she  forgot,  Catherine 
II.  recalled.  The  Star  of  the  North  could  not 
endure  the  rivalry  even  of  a  phantom.  An  at- 
tempt was  made  to  rescue  him.  The  keepers 
had  their  orders.  The  shadow  tsar  was  killed. 
That  was  Catherine's  doing.  Elisabeth  ob- 
jected to  rivals  also  but  not  to  shadows,  only  to 
women.  With  these  she  was  merciless.  Other- 
wise she  enjoyed  herself  hugely.  She  hunted 
all  day  and  danced  all  night.  At  some  of  the 
dances  she  appeared  as  a  man.  On  such  occa- 
sions it  was  etiquette  for  all  court  young  women 
to  appear  as  men  and  for  all  young  men  to  ap- 
pear as  women.  Elisabeth  liked  that.  She  liked 
young  men  in  women's  clothes.  Moreover,  that 
they  might  be  properly  sent  out,  she  acted  as 
dresser,  selecting  in  the  process  those  that 
pleased  her  most.  In  regard  to  her  own  mas- 
querade she  had  a  reason  quite  as  interesting. 
Her  leg  was  well  turned,  she  knew  she  looked 
well  as  a  man,  kne*vv,  too,  that  women  generally 
look  the  reverse.  To  be  merely  empress  was 
insufficient.  After  the  manner  of  a  chatelaine 
in  the  days  and  in  the  lands  of  chivalry,  she 


The  Northern  Messalina  115 

wanted  to  be  Queen  of  Beauty  and  of  Love. 

In  these  diversions,  age  had  the  insolence  to 
approach  her.  Illness  dared  to  touch  her.  On 
her  beauty  they  laid  a  smearing  hand.  That 
was  crime,  a  crime  long  since  codified — crimen 
lessee  majestatis  divince. 

The  woman  loved  life,  loved  love,  but  she 
loved  her  beauty  best.  To  it,  to  her  gowns,  her 
coiffure,  her  mirror,  she  gave  contented  hours. 
She  never  wore  the  same  frock  twice.  No  one 
was  permitted  to  copy  her  coiffure  until  she  had 
adopted  another  arrangement.  One  night  she 
put  a  rose  in  her  hair.  The  Countess  Lapouk- 
hin  did  the  same.  She  got  her  face  slapped  for 
it,  with  the  knout  and  Siberia  to  follow.  As 
Elisabeth  dealt  it  to  that  woman,  the  high  fates 
dealt  it  to  her.  The  knout  was  her  mirror,  her 
prison  a  darkened  room.  There,  the  goddess 
passed  from  sight,  the  sovereign  disappeared. 
Like  the  countess,  she  was  in  the  house  of  the 
dead. 

There  were  hours  when  she  meditated  escape. 
The  lustres  were  lighted  and  in  a  fresh  Paris- 
ianism,  her  hair  redressed,  her  face  rerouged, 
her  neck  circled  with  emeralds  as  big  and  as 
naked  as  eggs,  the  illusion  of  lost  beauty  re- 
turned. But  who  was  that  rancid  horror  that 
stood  and  stared?     From  the  mirror  she  turned, 


Ii6  The  Imperial  Orgy 

the  illusion  had  gone  and,  weeping,  she  drank. 

Her  sins  were  scarlet.  They  might  have  been 
remitted  if  she  had  lived  long  enough.  With 
longer  life  she  would  have  washed  them  in  the 
paler  crimson  of  Frederick's  blood.  Her  troops 
entered  Berlin.  East  Prussia  was  theirs.  Pom- 
merania  was  theirs.  Elisabeth  directed  them. 
More  exactly,  a  thousand  miles  from  the  front, 
she  shook  her  pen  at  her  generals.  "If  any  man 
wavers,"  that  pen  told  Saltykov,  "send  him  to 
me  in  chains." 

They  might  have  sent  her  the  incompetent 
parvenu  whom  the  lackeys  of  history  call  the 
Great,  and  who,  serving  as  model  for  Wilhelm 
II.,  fled  in  fright  from  the  battlefield  as  that  fel- 
low fled;  bombarded  cathedrals  as  he  did  under 
pretext  that  they  served  as  conning  towers;  re- 
garded treaties  as  the  same  scraps  of  paper;  or- 
dered the  same  frightfulness  and  pretended  he 
had  not;  pretended  also,  precisely  as  that  scrof- 
ulous dwarf  pretended,  that  he  did  not  want 
war  and  warred  only  because  Europe  was  jeal- 
ous. England,  credulous  as  her  lackeys,  believed 
him.  Just  prior  to  Rossbach,  he  told  d'Argens 
that,  if  he  lost  it,  he  would  practise  medicine. 
D'Argens  nodded: — "Toujours  assassin." 

Elisabeth  lacked  the  time  to  snuff  him  out  but, 
for  the  remainder  of  the  century,  she  snuffed 


The  Northern  Messalina  117 

Prussia.  That  was  the  war-woman.  The  lady 
of  pleasure  had  other  ideals.  There  was  her 
namesake,  the  first  good  Queen  Bess.  She 
wanted  to  reserrtble  her.  She,  too,  wanted  to  par- 
ade as  a.  Virgin  Queen.  The  task  was  difficult, 
but  that  made  it  all  the  more  commendable. 
Consequently,  when  she  took  it  into*-  her  head  to 
marry,  the  ceremony  was  performed  sub  rosa. 
The  rose  was  not  very  tenebrous.  The  court, 
Petersburg,  everybody,  even  the  dvorniks,  looked 
through  it  at  the  ceremony,  which  she  had  so 
often  omitted  that  it  was  thought  highly  original 
of  her  to  observe  it  at  all. 

The  happy  man  was  Russian.  It  is  said  that 
she  induced  herself  to  accept  him  out  of  patriot- 
ism, in  order  that  she  and  the  throne  might  not 
become  the  prey  of  some  foreign  prince.  Every- 
thing is  possible  and  it  may  be  true.  But  the 
compatriot  whom  she  selected  for  her  country's 
sake,  she  had  already  selected  for  her  own.  He 
was  the  tenor  who  preceded  the  regiment  and, 
though  a  tenor,  not  in  the  least  ferocious,  on  the 
contrary,  an  amiable,  heavy-witted  peasant  in 
Sunday  clothes. 

His  name  was  Razoumovski.  His  father 
kept  a  pothouse  where  his  mother  was  waitress. 
Good,  plain,  natural  people,  their  son  was  the 
proper    mate    for    a    servant-girl's    daughter. 


1 1 8  The  Imperial  Orgy- 

Known  after  the  ceremony  as  the  nocturnal  em- 
peror, his  mother  came  to  call.  Suitably,  or  at 
all  events  ornamentally  attired  beforehand,  she 
saw  herself  in  a  mirror,  mistook  what  she  saw 
for  her  daughter-in-law  and  fell  on  her  knees. 

The  picture  is  Arcadian.  To  embellish  it 
Razoumovski's  behaviour  was  Boetian.  He  had 
none  of  Menchikov's  pretensions,  no  Biihren 
ambitions,  no  Lynar  airs.  Years  later,  when 
Elisabeth  was  dead,  he  said  that  he  had  never 
been  other  than  the  most  humble  of  her  majesty's 
subjects.  It  was  quite  true.  No  jealousy  of  any 
kind.  No  interference  of  any  sort.  No  views. 
The  art  of  loving  people  as  though  you  hated 
them  was  too  complicated  for  this  peasant  who 
presented,  in  its  perfection,  a  picture,  life-size, 
of  the  mari  sage,  or  rather  would  have,  were  it 
not  that,  like  Amanda,  he  had  one  defect.  He 
drank.  But  then  the  regiment  that  single  file 
marched  through  the  boudoir  of  his  lady,  any 
husband,  however  discreet,  might  wish  to  for- 
get. 

Drink  aiding,  he  so  thoroughly  succeeded 
that,  though  made  count,  prince,  field-marshal, 
his  native  simplicity  remained  unimpaired.  Al- 
ways and  everywhere,  in  public,  in  private,  in 
life  and  in  death,  he  was  the  most  humble  of  her 
majesty's  subjects,   except  once,  when,   excited 


The  Northern  Messalina  ng 

by  liquor,  he  hit  Saltykov  over  the  head.  What 
made  the  incident  particularly  awkward  was 
Saltykov's  inability  to  hit  back.  A  nocturnal 
emperor  was  sacred.  But  that  incident,  the 
marriage  itself,  Razoumovski  included,  would 
not  merit  a  footnote,  were  it  not  for  a  drama 
that  ensued. 

Paris,  years  later,  became  interested  in  a  visi- 
tor of  whom  nothing  was  known  and  everything 
could  be  imagined.  Young,  fair,  rich  and  mys- 
terious, about  her  was  the  atmosphere  of  the  far- 
away, a  flavour  that  was  heightened  by  her  eyes 
which,  like  Ann  Boleyn's,  were  of  different  col- 
ours. One  was  dark  amber,  the  other  deep  blue. 
Her  name,  equally  strange  and  oddly  undulant, 
was  Aly  Emettee  de  Vlodomir,  Princess  Tara- 
kanov. 

What  and  where  was  Vlodomir?  Who  and 
what  were  the  Tarakanovs?  There  was  then 
no  Almanach  de  Gotha  to  reply.  But  in  the 
young  woman's  household  there  were  those  who 
did  as  well.  Vlodomir  and  Tarakanov  were 
domains  of  which  their  lady  was  lord.  She  may 
have  been,  but  servants  sometimes  embroider. 

Yet  she  had  that  air,  remote,  gracious,  triste, 
which,  in  fairyland,  poets  and  royals  display. 
Estates,  domains,  patents  of  nobility,  robes  et 
manteaux,  these  things  may  be  had.     But  that 


i2o  The  Imperial  Orgy 

air,  never  1  It  is  nowhere  on  sale.  This  girl 
exhaled  it  and,  with  it,  the  gift  of  the  strange 
gods  which  innate  charm  is. 

Whether  she  were  or  were  not  what  she  after- 
ward claimed  to  be,  is  one  of  the  minor  enigma? 
of  history.  But  her  belief  in  a  secret  that  en- 
veloped her,  became  the  tragedy  of  her  tragic 
life.  On  the  sheer  red  peaks  of  torture,  peaks 
that  are  the  summits  of  human  agony,  she  clung 
to  it,  refusing  to  retract,  asking  only  that  there 
be  said  over  her  a  prayer  for  the  dead. 

In  Paris,  years  ago,  Flavinski,  a  Russian 
artist,  exhibited  a  painting  of  which  the  horror 
and  the  execution  detained.  It  showed  this  girl 
standing  on  a  cot  in  a  vault  into  which  water 
poured  through  a  grating.  Her  back  against 
the  wall,  her  head  bent  by  the  low  roof,  her 
hands  clasped  in  terror,  it  was  obvious  that  in  a 
moment  the  water  would  reach  and  claim  her. 

The  vault  wras  a  subterranean  cell  of  a  Peters- 
burg prison  which  the  Neva,  rising,  had  flooded. 
Before  Petersburg  became  Petrograd  the  cell 
was  shown.  Given  the  money  and  the  guide 
and  one  can  be  shown  anything.  What  the  pic- 
ture represented  never  occurred.  The  Princess 
Tarakanov  was  not  drowned,  she  was  murdered. 

The  story  of  the  girl  is  brief,  simple,  bizarre 
and  horrible.    Her  first  memories  were  of  a  Rus- 


The  Northern  Messalina  121 

sian  convent  from  which,  while  still  a  child,  she 
was  taken  endlessly  to  Baghdad,  thence  on  to 
Isfahan,  where  she  grew  up  in  the  palace  of  a 
prince  who  treated  her  with  a  respect  invariable 
and  profound.  Later  she  went  with  him  to  Lon- 
don. There  he  left  her,  supplying  her  before- 
hand with  money  and  an  entourage  and  reveal- 
ing to  her  a  secret,  of  which  long  since  whispers 
had  reached  her,  and  concerning  which  docu- 
mentary evidence  would  in  time,  he  said,  be  pro- 
duced. 

It  was  in  these  circumstances  that,  vacating 
London,  she  went  to  Paris,  afterward  to  Vienna, 
then  to  Venice,  where  the  polite  world  was  in- 
trigued by  this  exotic  princess  who  looked  like  a 
houri  and  who  lived  like  a  vestal. 

In  that  she  reversed  the  order  of  things.  To 
look  like  a  vestal  is  always  permissible,  but  to 
live  like  one  was  not  fashionable  then.  At  the 
time,  the  fervours  of  Cyprus  were  forgotten. 
The  altars  to  Eros  and  Aphrodite  were  dust. 
From  the  crystal  parapets  where  they  leaned 
and  laughed,  the  immortals  had  gone.  But  not 
very  high,  nor  yet  very  far.  Over  the  eighteenth- 
century  metropoles  of  pleasure,  they  leaned  and 
laughed  as  before.  Their  shrines  had  crumbled, 
their  temples  had  fallen,  but  their  worship  en- 
dured.    They  were  the  immortals.     Modernity 


122  The  Imperial  Orgy 

could  not  touch  them,  time  could  not  reach  them, 
only  their  names  had  changed.  Instead  of  Eros 
was  Temptation;  in  place  of  Aphrodite,  De- 
light. In  the  current  literature  were  their  rit- 
uals; in  paintings  and  statues,  their  images;  in 
opera,  their  hymns.  The  contagion  of  their  rites 
fevered  and  depraved. 

In  the  amorality  of  the  neo-pagan  atmosphere, 
the  princess  really  loved.  She  loved  in  an  epoch 
when  no  one  loved  at  all.  It  was  very  eccentric 
of  her.  To  be  eccentric  is  always  hazardous. 
The  danger  was  there.  She  mistook  it  for  bliss. 
In  that  disguise  it  caught  and  killed  her. 

A  prince  asked  her  hand.  The  prince  was 
Radziwill,  a  Polish  refugee,  who  travelled  about 
with  the  twelve  apostles,  life-size,  in  massivei 
gold,  which,  in  accordance  with  his  needs,  he 
melted. 

In  considering  the  proposal,  which  she  pres- 
ently rejected,  she  told  him  the  secret.  It  was 
so  inspiring  that  with  it  he  planned  to  have  the 
Sultan  put  them  both  on  the  throne  of  the  Jagel- 
lons.  Whether  he  were  suited  for  it  is  unim- 
portant. But  she  looked  the  queen  which  she 
might  have  been,  though  not  perhaps  in  Po- 
land. Apparently,  too,  the  time  had  come. 
From  Isfahan  the  other  prince,  the  Persian,  sent 
her  the  promised  papers. 


The  Northern  Messalina  123 

Among  them  was  Elisabeth's  will.  Elisabeth 
then  was  dead.  Catherine  II.  had  succeeded  her. 
According  to  the  documents,  the  accession  was 
illegal.  In  the  will,  Elisabeth  appointed  her 
daughter  to  succeed  her  and  that  daughter,  issue 
of  her  marriage  with  Razoumovski,  was  Aly 
Emettee  de  Vlodomir. 

At  the  time,  she  was  in  the  ideal  city  of  the 
material  world.  Venice  should  have  detained 
this  girl  who  embodied  its  charm.  But  the 
dream  that  always  had  been  with  her  and  which, 
it  may  be,  had  given  her  the  look,  enigmatically 
triste,  which  they  alone  display  whom  destiny 
has  marked  for  some  fate,  supreme  or  tragic, 
that  dream,  or  that  destiny,  held  her  and  led 
her  and  hid  her  away. 

Then,  too,  a  rumour  of  the  will,  the  report 
that  she  was  granddaughter  of  Peter  the  Great, 
the  evocation  of  power  absolute,  these  things 
and  her  presence,  sovereign,  gracious,  sad, 
stirred  Venice.  Along  the  liquid  streets  ran 
the  ripple  of  the  cry,  "Viva  I'imperatrice!" 

That  also  may  have  been  coercive.  Presently, 
in  addition,  there  was  love. 

Radziwill,  meanwhile,  more  enthusiastic, 
more  enamoured  and  more  absurd  than  ever, 
melted  his  last  apostle.  Clearly  the  Sultan,  Per- 
fume of  Paradise,  Shadow  of  God  on  Earth, 


124  The  Imperial  Orgy 

could  refuse  nothing  to  a  descendant  of  the 
Porte's  arch-foe.  The  plan  was  magnificent,  it 
was  also  insane.  The  princess,  disassociating 
herself  from  him  and  from  it,  went  to  Ragusa, 
where  she  sent  the  admiral  of  a  Russian  squad- 
ron, then  at  Leghorn,  a  copy  of  her  mother's 
will. 

The  admiral,  Alexis  Orlov,  had  been  Cath- 
erine's lover.  He  referred  the  matter  to  her. 
In  reply  he  was  commanded  to  seize  the  claim- 
ant at  any  cost,  even  though  he  had  to  bombard 
the  coast  to  get  her. 

That  order,  if  executed,  meant  war.  It  is  per- 
haps obvious  that  Catherine,  in  giving  it,  knew 
the  facts  and  preferred  war  to  their  recognition. 

Historians  generally  have  ignored  that  point. 
Generally  they  have  ignored  the  princess.  Other- 
wise they  have  derided  her.  To  some,  her  Per- 
sian was  a  fabulous  being.  To  others,  her  purity 
was  as  mythical.  Challemel-Lacour  described 
her  as  an  adventuress.  She  may  have  been.  But 
some  time  later,  de  Verac,  the  French  minister 
at  Petersburg,  received  a  bill  which  he  was 
asked  to  collect.  The  bill  was  from  a  Paris 
merchant  who  claimed  that  the  Princess  Tara- 
kanov  owed  him  fifty  thousand  francs.  De  Verac 
had  never  heard  of  the  lady.  At  headquarters 
he  asked  about  her.     He  was  requested  not  to 


The  Northern  Messalina  125 

ask  again,  but  he  was  told  that  the  bill  would  be 
paid,  which  it  was,  although  bills  incurred  by 
the  Russian  squadron  in  French  waters  were 
protested  and  payment  refused.  Privately,  his 
enquiries  continued.  From  the  secret  service 
he  learned  that  the  princess  was  Elisabeth  II. 

In  those  days  communication  was  very  lei- 
surely. When  Orlov  received  Catherine's  com- 
mands, the  course  he  adopted  was  characteristic- 
ally that  of  the  average  Russian  of  whom  it 
is  characteristic  not  to  have  any  character  at  all. 
He  prostrated  himself  before  the  girl  whom  he 
called  his  empress  and  to  whom  he  swore  the 
fealty  of  a  knight.  The  sad  girl  listened,  lis- 
tened longer,  listened  as  she  had  listened  to  no 
man  before.  Orlov  was  a  giant  and  an  athlete. 
Because  of  a  fight  in  which  he  had  sunk  the 
Turkish  fleet,  he  was  called  a  hero.  He  looked 
it.  He  was  superiorly  handsome.  Though  a 
ruffian,  he,  too,  could  charm.  That  charm  en- 
circled her.  Italy  and  youth  and  love!  Love 
in  the  land  where,  said  Owen  Meredith,  "love 
most  lovely  seems!" 

In  the  girl's  entourage  there  were  those  who 
doubted,  who  warned,  who  perhaps  foresaw. 
But  the  girl  who  had  never  yet  loved,  then  loved 
wholly.  The  man,  his  splendid  vigour,  his 
knightly  allegiance,  enthralled.    Then  too  there 


126  The  Imperial  Orgy 

was  the  dream  into  which  he  entered  with  her. 
He  told  her,  what  was  true,  that  he  and  his 
brothers  had  put  Catherine  on  the  throne.  He 
added,  what  was  false,  that  he  and  his  brothers 
would  take  it  from  her.  Then,  if  his  lady  but 
deigned,  she  and  he  could  share  it. 

In  the  passionate  wooing  the  impassioned  girl 
was  won.  She  became  his  wife  and,  amid  the 
boom  of  guns  and  acclaiming  cries,  went  with 
him  to  the  flagship,  where  instantly  he  disap- 
peared. About  her  were  marines.  She  was  a 
prisoner.  A  prisoner  she  remained  until  she 
reached  Petersburg  where  Catherine  had  her 
put  to  the  question,  tortured  to  death. 

The  throne  then  was  secure.  From  it  Cath- 
erine had  torn  an  emperor  whom  she  murdered. 
From  it  she  had  held  another  emperor  whom 
she  killed.  There  were  no  more  claimants.  The 
last  of  the  Romanovs  was  dead,  and  at  her  latest 
lover  the  empress  leered. 


VII 

VENUS  VICTRIX 

FROM  the  cupboard  of  yawns  that  history 
is,  Catherine  the  Greater  emerges  in 
spangles.  Her  life  was  an  opera  com- 
posed by  Chance.  Musicians  do  not  know  him; 
mythographers  do  not  mention  him,  mathema- 
ticians deny  that  he  is.  Yet,  drawn  in  a  chariot 
of  jewels  by  horses  of  flame,  those  whom  he 
favours  are  raised  to  the  sky.  Chance  carried 
her  portrait  from  a  tinpot  principality  to  the 
great  Peter's  grandson  and  herself  to  the  throne. 

That  grandson,  a  poodle-faced  boy,  pock- 
marked, witless,  neurotically  unable  to  be  still, 
and  whose  tongue,  when  not  wagging  with  in- 
anities, hung  like  a  hound's  from  his  mouth, 
was  the  son  of  the  Duchess  of  Holstein-Gottorp, 
Elisabeth's  sister.  Appointed  tsarevitch,  he  was 
given  for  bride  the  Princess  Sophia  Augusta  of 
Anhalt-Zerbst,  whom  the  Church  christened 
Catherine;  and  Voltaire,  Semiramis. 

The  name  rolls;  it  is  empty  as  sound.  Semi- 
ramis never  existed.     But  the  name  subsists.    It 

127 


128  The  Imperial  Orgy- 

means  the  One  who  Loves.  As  such  it  fitted  this 
girl  who  was  to  become  the  grande  amou reuse 
and  whose  dramatic  entrance  into  history  was 
effected  with  a  swoon.  At  sight  of  the  whelp 
she  fainted. 

A  virgin  and — in  appearance — very  ethereal, 
she  had  two  ambitions.  She  wanted  the  mantle 
of  glory.  She  wanted  the  perfume  of  Eros.  She 
wanted  to  be  Venus  Victrix. 

At  the  time,  a  Psyche  on  a  fan,  slight  and 
very  fair,  her  mouth  was  red  as  sealing-wax, 
her  hair  an  auburn  turban.  Her  eyes,  sometimes 
heliotrope,  were  sometimes  green,  sometimes 
grey.  In  later  years,  dignity  replaced  the  de- 
liciousness  that  had  been.  In  lieu  of  Psyche, 
there  was  Juno.  With  age  came  the  sibyl,  a 
sybil  obese,  dropsical,  sinister.  But  when  she 
left  Stettin,  where  she  had  played  with  raga- 
muffins in  the  sullen  streets,  and  journeyed  to 
Russia  and  the  throne,  it  was  endearing  to  see 
the  blushes,  the  ingenuousness,  the  modesty  that 
she  displayed.  She  looked  precisely  what  she 
was,  fresh  from  school,  pretty  enough  to  eat — 
while  preparing  to  devour  an  empire. 

In  her  memoirs  she  says  that  already  she  had 
determined  to  have  it  and  have  it  alone.  By 
way  of  preparation  for  the  meal,  she  sharpened 
her  teeth  on   Machiavelli,  taught  herself  Rus- 


Venus  Victrix  129 

sian  and  meditated  the  mosaics  of  the  Greek 
faith.  In  marrying  the  whelp  that  faith  would 
have  to  be  hers.  But  she  had  no  inconvenient 
scruples.  She  would  have  become  Mormon  if 
necessary  and  though  it  was  not,  she  did.  That, 
though,  was  later.  Meanwhile,  from  the  swoon 
into  which  the  prospective  delights  of  marriage 
with  the  poodle-faced  boy  had  thrown  her,  she 
got  herself  together,  got  the  whelp  and,  when 
the  throne  was  his,  put  him  from  it  as  a  child 
is  put  to  sleep.  For  soothing  syrup  he  had 
poison;  for  lullaby,  contempt;  for  cradle,  a 
grave. 

The  whelp — historically  Peter  III. — was  a 
German.  He  was  born  a  German,  died  a  Ger- 
man. Frederick,  at  the  time,  was  on  his  knees. 
This  imbecile  first  raised  him  up,  then  knelt 
before  him.  From  that  day,  Prussia  began  an 
ascent  that  culminated  at  the  Marne.  The  origi- 
nal Romanov  was  a  Prussian.  Peter  III.  was 
a  Hun. 

Among  other  children  of  Catherine  was  Paul, 
who  succeeded  her.  In  her  memoirs  she  says 
that  Peter  the  Little  was  not  Paul's  father.  His- 
torians who  know  more  about  it  than  she  did, 
insist  that  he  was.  In  listening  to  them,  one 
might  mistake  the  lady  for  an  austere  matron. 
The  error  would  have  annoyed  her.     She  had 


130  The  Imperial  Orgy 

no  false  pride.  On  the  other  hand,  she  did  have 
a  few  lovers.  Among  them  was  Saltykov,  who 
may  have  been  Paul's  father.  But,  as  Voltaire 
said,  and  said  too  very  reasonably: — "These  are 
family  matters." 

All  that  was  later.  At  the  start,  Catherine, 
who  had  determined  to  be  first,  began  by  being 
last.  Before  commanding,  she  obeyed;  before 
usurping,  she  effaced  herself.  To  Elisabeth,  she 
was  adorably  subservient;  to  Peter,  unutterably 
considerate;  to  the  court — amazed  at  such  guile- 
lessness — she  was  delightfully  ingenue.  To  no 
one,  however  obscure,  was  she  negligent.  She 
importuned  no  one,  however  great.  She  gave 
everything  and  asked  nothing.  The  rose  was 
her  model.  She  charmed  and  was  silent.  Yet, 
without  seeming  to  listen,  she  heard  everything. 
Apparently  ethereal,  she  was  preparing  to  gob- 
ble a  throne. 

Hunger  appeased,  Cinderbritch  vanished. 
The  swooning  virgin  had  gone.  To  the  court's 
astonishment,  an  ingenue  became  a  general;  a 
girl,  a  despot.  Peter  the  Great  made  Russia 
recognise  Europe.  Catherine  the  Greater  made 
Russia  recognised  by  the  world.  That  is  his- 
tory. When  enemies  were  arming,  concerning 
their  number  she  never  enquired.  What  she 
asked  was: — ''Where  are  they?"     That  is  Ro- 


CATHERIN]    II 


Venus  Victrix  131 

man.  When  she  learned  that  Diderot  was  poor, 
she  bought  his  library,  made  him  its  custodian 
and  paid  him  a  salary  for  fifteen  years  in  ad- 
vance. That  is  delightful.  When  her  purse 
was  empty  she  evoked  the  ghost  of  gold  that 
paper  money  is  and  saddled  her  country  with 
debt.  Had  she  wished  she  could  have  manufac- 
tured money  out  of  leather,  out  of  blades  of 
grass  and  given  it  any  value  she  liked.  She 
could  do  anything  and  did  almost  everything. 
She  cowered  but  once.  That  was  at  the  sight 
of  the  French  revolution.  Immediately  she 
straightened.  Her  little  household,  as  she  called 
Russia,  was  not  France.  Moreover,  she  com- 
manded an  army  that  fought  without  pay,  with- 
out rest,  often  without  food  and  always  with- 
out complaint.  Against  that  army  no  revolu- 
tion could  prevail.  No,  nor  Asia  either.  Had 
she  lived,  she  would  have  owned  it. 

Beside  her,  Peter,  her  lord,  looked  exactly 
what  he  was  and  nothing  worse  can  be  said  of 
him — an  imbecile  who  drilled  tin  soldiers, 
dressed  wax  dolls,  trained  terriers  in  his  bed- 
room, occupied  his  absence  of  mind  with  gro- 
tesque puerilities,  worshipped  Frederick,  made 
peace  with  Prussia,  prussianised  the  army,  got 
drunk  with  his  lackeys  and  foisted  on  the  court 
a  band  of  Holsteiners  as  ignoble — if  that  be  pos- 


132  The  Imperial  Orgy 

sible — as  himself.  Catherine,  meanwhile,  belle 
comme  le  jour,  to  employ  her  own  description 
of  herself,  was  dreaming  of  grandeur  absolute. 
By  way  of  practise,  she  managed  the  idiot's 
duchy.  Later,  when  the  dream  came  true,  she 
found  it  quite  as  easy  to  manage  his  empire. 
She  was  a  born  administrator  and  yet  a  woman. 
But  what  a  woman!  Caesar  and  Faustine  com- 
bined. 

Faustine  had  many  lovers.  Catherine  had 
more.  But  before  she  was  empress  only  a  few, 
just  enough  to  hand  her  up  on  the  throne  from 
which  they  pulled  her  husband  off.  In  tsaral 
annals,  the  modus  of  the  elimination,  then 
unique,  was  to  become  common.  Peter  III.  was 
murdered.  He  was  given  arsenic  in  vodka.  The 
poison  being  ineffective,  Alexis  Orlov  knocked 
him  down,  held  him  down  and  strangled  him 
with  a  napkin.  Orlov's  punishment,  highly  dra- 
matic, and  equally  delayed,  will  be  told  later 
on.  For  the  murder  itself,  Catherine  has  been 
rebuked.  Perhaps  it  had  its  excuse.  Prior  to 
Elisabeth's  death,  Peter  the  Small  had  made  it 
clear  to  Semiramis  that  once  tsar  he  would  di- 
vorce and  replace  her,  as  Peter  the  Great's  wife 
had  been  replaced,  by  a  scullion.  Catherine  had 
therefore  the  choice  between  immolating  and 


Venus  Victrix  133 

being  immolated.    It  was  at  dinner  that  she  de- 
cided. 

Tacitus  tells  of  a  supper,  given  by  Nero  to 
Britannicus,  who  died  of  it.  "After  a  moment 
of  silence,"  the  historian  noted,  "gaiety  re- 
turned." Post  breve  silentium,  repetitia  convivit 
Icetltia.    The  dinner  resembled  that  supper. 

The  dinner  was  held  in  a  high  hall,  hung 
with  Asiatic  splendour,  flooded  with  European 
light.  The  foreign  ministers  were  there,  the 
great  nobles,  the  ladies  of  honour,  a  swarm  of 
princes  and  peris  perfumed  with  lies,  starred 
with  diamonds,  radiant  as  rainbows. 

Peter,  rising,  proposed  the  health  of  the  im- 
perial family.  Catherine  remained  seated.  Why 
not?  The  imperial  family  consisted  of  herself; 
of  Paul,  who  was  a  child;  of  Peter,  who  was 
her  husband. 

"Doura!"  Peter  the  Small  bawled  at  her. 
"Fool!" 

Everybody  heard,  except  Catherine.  With  a 
smile  she  turned  to  one  of  her  gentlemen.  With 
a  fresher  smile  she  turned  to  another.  A  mo- 
ment merely.  But  in  that  moment  a  grave  had 
been  dug.  Then  she  looked  at  Peter.  So  must 
Nero  have  looked  at  Britannicus. 

Peter  counted  for  little.  What  he  did  count 
for  was  German.     Petersburg  had  an  indiges- 


134  The  Imperial  Orgy 

tion  of  Teuton  customs,  Teuton  manners,  Teu- 
ton touts.  Catherine  was  not  Teuton.  She  had 
begun  by  being  German  but  the  taint  had  been 
drained.  She  had  become  wholly  Russian  prior 
to  becoming  entirely  French.  The  versatility 
of  her  universality  enthralled  prelates  and  pre- 
torians,  the  boiars  and  the  army.  When  the 
time  came,  she  but  lifted  her  finger.  They  rose 
to  her. 

The  dinner  was  in  celebration  of  peace  with 
Prussia  whom  Elisabeth,  had  she  lived,  would 
have  knifed.  A  few  days  later,  Peter  celebrated 
the  peace  again,  but  on  this  occasion  at  Oranien- 
baum,  a  plaisance  where  Catherine  omitted  to 
accompany  him. 

Incidentally  the  Orlovs  were  at  work,  five  of 
them,  five  brothers,  five  men  with  one  head, 
each  of  whom  commanded  a  regiment,  in  one  of 
which  Potemkin  was  lieutenant.  Gregori  Or- 
lov,  the  eldest  of  the  brothers,  but  though  the 
eldest  still  very  young,  had  so  charmed  Cath- 
erine that  familiarly  she  was  called  Madame 
Gregori.  He  was  one  of  the  men  to  whom  she 
had  turned  and  smiled  on  the  night  of  the  din- 
ner. The  other  man  was  Alexis  Orlov,  who 
had  charmed  her  also. 

Early  one  morning,  shortly  after,  Alexis  Or- 
lov brought  her,  dressed  as  a  general,  to  the  bar- 


Venus  Victrix  135 

racks.  There,  a  priest,  raising  a  cross,  recited 
an  oath.  The  soldiers  repeated  it.  A  cry  went 
up,  "Live  the  empress!"  In  that  cry  Peters- 
burg joined. 

To  the  blare  of  brass,  the  regiments  started, 
Catherine  on  horseback  leading.  Peter  got 
wind  of  it.  He  fled  to  a  fortress.  The  wind 
had  preceded  him. 

From  a  rampart  a  sentry  called: — "Who  goes 
there?" 

"The  emperor." 

"There  is  no  emperor.    Move  on!" 

Peter  turned  and,  whimpering  like  a  beaten 
cur,  offered  to  share  the  sceptre.  Catherine 
declined.  He  begged  for  mercy.  Officially,  his 
death  was  ascribed  to  apoplexy.  Cretinism  were 
more  exact. 

Peter  had  many  defects.  The  gravest  was  an 
inability  to  appreciate  a  Tiberius  in  skirts.  That 
fault  official  Russia  did  not  share.  It  rose  to 
her  and  it  knelt.  Then,  presently,  about  the 
throne,  the  perfume  of  Eros  mounted. 

In  the  ballroom  of  her  heart,  the  Orlovs  were 
not  her  first  partners,  nor  were  they  the  last. 
Their  predecessors  were  not  numerous,  but  their 
successors  were  without  number.  Moralists 
have  blamed  her  for  that  and  no  doubt  very 
justly.    None  the  less,  her  cotillon  favours  repre- 


136  The  Imperial  Orgy 

sented  something  else  than  the  caprices  of  an 
empress  autocratically  privileged  to  do  as  she 
liked.  Catherine  elevated  her  men  Pompadours 
to  the  dignity  of  a  state  institution.  They  had 
appointments,  prerogatives,  and  a  position  that 
was  exceeded  only  by  her  own  and  which  fre- 
quently was  on  an  equality  with  it.  Several  of- 
fended her  greatly,  successively  she  wearied  of 
each,  yet  to  all  she  was  decent,  none  incurred 
her  dislike.  One,  whom  she  surprised  with  her 
nearest  friend,  she  dismissed,  but  not  to  Siberia. 
Another  she  relinquished  to  a  rival,  without 
chopping  his  head  off  first.  Christine  of  Swe- 
den had  a  faithless  du  Barry  killed  in  her  pres- 
ence. Queen  Elisabeth  was  as  bloody.  Lovers 
of  whom  Catherine  wearied  or  who  wearied  of 
her,  preserved  her  friendship,  enjoyed  her  pro- 
tection. When  their  intimacy  with  her  ended, 
their  service  to  the  state  began.  Or,  if  they 
lacked  the  ability,  they  lived  semi-royally  on 
her  royal  largesse. 

The  first  to  gather  her  handkerchief  was  Sal- 
tykov, a  young  assembly  of  brilliant  vices  whose 
assiduities,  favoured  for  reasons  dynastic,  were 
interrupted.  He  was  given  an  honorific  exile 
and  sent  as  minister  to  Sweden.  Catherine,  who 
was  not  then  Semiramis,  but  grand-duchess 
merely,  shed  no  tears.     The  lustre  of  his  bril- 


Venus  Victrix  137 

liance  had  been  already  dimmed.  Into  her  ken 
another  partner  had  swum.  The  new  planet 
was  Poniatowski,  a  tourist  from  Poland  who 
returned  there  as  king. 

The  kingship  had  been  predicted.  When  but 
a  child  an  astrologer  drew  his  horoscope.  In 
it  was  a  throne.  What  throne?  Nobody  knew, 
but  he  was  trained  for  it  as  a  colt  is  trained  for 
a  race.  In  the  training  he  acquired  the  atti- 
tude and  strut  of  a  king  on  the  stage.  That  was 
mere  facade.  Back  of  it  was  the  ingenuousness 
of  a  young  lady,  and  fronting  it  was  a  smile  in 
which  there  was  Chateau  Yquem.  Such  a  smile 
is  heady.  It  captivated  Catherine.  But  though 
he  had  a  languorous  eye  on  her,  he  had  another 
and  a  very  timorous  one  on  Siberia.  In  Russia, 
one  never  knew!    Besides,  he  barely  escaped  it. 

Late  one  night  he  reached  the  grand-ducal 
residence  where  Catherine  awaited  him.  While 
effecting  a  surreptitious  entrance,  he  was  sur- 
prised by  the  guard  and  taken  to  Peter.  At 
the  moment,  the  future  monarch  was  guzzling 
with  his  lady,  a  very  elegant  young  person, 
squint-eyed,  stupid,  malodorous,  who,  Masson 
says,  spat  when  she  talked. 

Peter  grinned.     "Come   to   assassinate   me?" 

Poniatowski,  his  facade  crumbling,  stam- 
mered a  protest. 


138  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Peter  giggled.  "He,  he!  You're  after  the 
grand-duchess.  Well,  run  along.  I,  too,  have  a 
girl." 

Subsequently,  Catherine  gave  him  a  crown. 
That  bit  of  jewellry  was  his  walking-stick.  She 
made  him  king  to  be  rid  of  him.  Poland,  the 
mad  nation,  a  nation  chivalrous,  heroic,  insane, 
removed  it.  Poland  that  had  withstood  the  Ta- 
tars and  was  to  withstand  everything,  could  not 
stand  a  young  lady,  though  recently  she  listened 
to  a  pianist.  From  the  Slav  Valhalla,  with  what 
fierce  surprise,  the  Jagellons,  her  warrior  kings, 
must  have  looked  down  at  that! 

Catherine's  handkerchief  passed  from  Ponia- 
towski  to  the  Orlovs,  from  them  to  Potemkin, 
from  him  to  Zubov.  Saltykov  and  Poniatowski 
were  her  maitres  de  danse.  In  the  great  cotillon 
that  followed,  the  Orlovs  mark  the  beginning, 
Potemkin  the  height,  Zubov  the  end.  Interme- 
diately were  other  partners,  though  how  many, 
history,  her  hostess,  fatigued  by  the  task  of  enu- 
merating them,  neglected  to  count.  But  in  the 
long  bacchanal,  Gregori  Orlov  detained  her 
most. 

Vigorous,  violent,  fearless,  a  giant  in  stat- 
ure, Gregori  Orlov  was  the  handsomest  man  of 
his  day.  After  the  manner  of  giants  he  was 
dull.     But  he  looked  every  inch  the  sultan  that 


Venus  Victrix  139 

he  became.  He  not  only  looked  the  sultan,  he 
filled  the  role.  To  him,  Semiramis  was  but  an- 
other odalisque  in  the  seraglio  which  he  main- 
tained. Catherine  tolerated  his  impertinences, 
ignored  his  infidelities,  forgave  whatever  he  did. 
Catherine  loved  him.  More  exactly,  like  every 
grande  amoureuse,  and  of  them  all  she  was  the 
greatest,  when  she  said  je  t'aime  she  meant  je 
m'aime  and  failed  to  see  the  difference.  Nor 
did  Orlov  see  it.  He  thought  of  marrying  her. 
It  seemed  the  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  She 
had  given  him  honours,  titles,  palaces,  serfs  by 
the  thousand,  domains  by  the  league.  She  shared 
the  treasury  with  him.  But  the  throne,  no. 
There  pride  interfered,  the  consciousness  that 
however  she  might  condescend,  the  sceptre  must 
remain  indivisibly  hers.  Then  also,  while  Orlov 
had  practically  put  the  sceptre  in  her  hand, 
while,  too,  he  was  a  sort  of  Greek  god,  yet  the 
coup  d'etat  had  been  to  him  merely  an  adven- 
ture, and  his  divinity  was  of  the  early  and  very 
primitive  type.  The  god  was  null.  Presently 
the  nullity  was  revealed.  To  have  an  empress 
at  his  feet  was  insufficient.  He  ran  off  with  a 
chit  of  a  girl,  who  died,  and  the  pulp  behind 
his  forehead  deglutinised.  He  went  mad,  cov- 
ering his  face  with  offal  which,  like  Ezechiel, 
he  ate. 


140  The  Imperial  Orgy 

At  the  time,  the  madness  was  said  to  have 
been  caused  not  at  all  by  grief,  but  by  an  herb 
with  which  Potemkin  poisoned  him. 

Potemkin  too  was  mad,  not  from  an  herb,  but 
with  genius.  One  of  the  many  who  handed 
Catherine  up  on  the  throne,  he  began,  on  the 
morning  of  the  coup  d'etat,  by  offering  her  a 
silver  feather  for  her  uniform  and  might  have 
ended  by  putting  the  Byzantine  crown  on  her 
head.  On  the  morning  of  the  revolution,  he 
was  an  ensign.  Orlov  gone,  he  was  vice-em- 
peror. Between  those  sentences  there  are  years. 
There  is  also  an  ascent  from  nowhere  to  every- 
thing. Catherine  made  him  prince,  premier, 
plutocrat,  generalissimo.  With  the  Crimea  and 
the  Black  Sea,  royally  he  repaid  her. 

Women  admire  the  brave  but  they  prefer  the 
audacious.  Saltykov  was  a  ladies'  man.  Pon- 
iatowski  was  a  lady.  Orlov  was  a  devil,  Po- 
temkin was  a  demon.  The  cotillon  which  Cath- 
erine danced  with  these  and  with  other  men  and 
in  which  she  displayed  a  temperamental  intem- 
perance more  extravagant  than  any  that  the  mod- 
ern world  has  beheld,  represents  the  spacious- 
ness of  her  heart,  which  many  entered  and  none 
could  fill.  Saltykov  surprised  her.  Poniatow- 
ski  charmed  her.  Orlov  carried  her  off  her  feet. 
Potemkin  held  her  in  the  air.     Her  interest  in 


Venus  Victrix  141 

Saltykov  and  in  Poniatowski  was  that  of  the  ama- 
teur in  experimental  physiology.  But  it  was 
Orlov  who  taught  her  to  love  and  Potemkin 
who  taught  her  to  reign.  If  neither  became  her 
master,  it  was  because  no  man  could  be  that. 

Potemkin  was  also  a  giant,  a  giant  with  one 
eye.  In  a  tavern  brawl  he  had  lost  the  other. 
Alexis  Orlov  knocked  it  out.  Gregori  Orlov 
was  gigantic  and  violent.  Alexis  Orlov  was  gi- 
gantic and  brutal.  Potemkin  was  gigantic  and 
terrible.  A  dark  cyclops  with  the  air  of  a  jackal 
and  the  negligences  of  a  pasha,  he  was  the  only 
one  of  Catherine's  partners  whom  she  had  not 
selected  for  his  looks,  but  also  he  was  the  only 
one  who  spared  her  the  advances  which  she 
was  always  obliged  to  make,  the  only  one  who 
dared.  That  won  her  to  this  man,  who  loved  her 
with  the  tenderness  of  an  amant  and  the  poetry 
of  a  troubadour.  She  was  his  mistress  and  his 
glory.  When  satiety  came,  ambition  linked  them 
still. 

Incidentally,  she  was  pushing  the  frontiers 
back,  extending  her  little  household,  at  the 
north,  to  the  aurora;  at  the  east  to  the  dawn; 
at  the  south,  nearly  to  the  gates  of  Stamboul. 

In  the  extension,  Potemkin  greatly  aided.  To 
her  menage  he  added  the  Crimea  and  then  took 
her  to  see  it. 


142  The  Imperial  Orgy- 

It  would  have  been  interesting  to  have  ac- 
companied her  in  the  Arabian  Night  entertain- 
ment that  he  devised  and  through  which  in  a 
sleigh — Cleopatra's  barge  on  runners  and  for 
which,  and  for  her  suite  that  followed,  there 
were  five  hundred  horses  at  each  relay — she 
passed  down  from  polar  ice  to  a  tropical  sun, 
from  Petersburg  to  the  Euxine,  from  surprise 
to  enchantment,  from  the  emptied  thrones  of  Ta- 
tar khans  to  the  abandoned  divans  of  Ottoman 
viceroys,  from  fallen  palaces  of  kings  of  the 
Bosphorus  to  the  crumbled  temples  of  Hercules 
and  Diana,  from  memories  of  Mithridates  to 
the  myths  of  Greece,  from  illusion  to  illusion, 
through  scenery  painted  on  canvas,  through  pan- 
oramas that  vanished  as  she  passed,  through 
trained  ballets  of  acclaiming  crowds,  through 
cascading  fireworks,  through  uninterrupted 
fetes,  down  into  glowing  gardens  where  Walla- 
chian  hospodars,  Circassian  princes,  dispossessed 
Georgian  lords  genuflected  to  the  Star  of  the 
North,  who,  at  the  end  of  the  route,  saw  a  tri- 
umphal arch  on  which  blazed  an  inscription — 
"The  Way  to  Stamboul." 

At  one  halt,   Catherine  was  greeted  by  the 
Austrian  emperor,  disguised  as  a  gentleman;  at 
another  by  Poniatowski,  disguised  as  a  king. 
Segur — French  minister  to  the  court  of  Semi- 


Venus  Victrix  143 

ramis — who  went  with  her,  said  that  the  meet- 
ing between  the  ex-amants  was  formal.  What 
did  he  expect?  But  presently  the  two  retired 
into  privacy  where  they  probably  talked  of  old 
times  as  old  people  do.  On  emerging,  Ponia- 
towski  had  mislaid  his  hat.  Catherine  found  and 
restored  it. 

"Ah!"   said    Poniatowski   with   his    Chateau 
Yquem  smile.    "You  gave  me  once  a  far  finer 


one." 


Segur  said  that  Catherine's  conversation  was 
very  banal.     Poniatowski  may  have  copied  it. 

Near  Moscow,  on  the  return  flight,  an  opera 
was  given  in  the  private  theatre  of  a  resident 
count.  The  composer,  the  librettist,  the  singers, 
the  musicians,  the  corps  de  ballet,  everybody 
connected  with  the  representation — except  the 
count's  guests — were  his  serfs.  Earlier  that  day 
the  tenor,  who  took  the  part  of  a  king,  had  been 
flogged.  At  a  supper  which  followed,  Segur 
noted  that  the  goblets,  enough  for  a  hundred, 
were  incrusted  with  jewels. 

Potcmkin  surpassed  the  count.  In  magnifi- 
cence, he  exceeded  Catherine.  His  entertain- 
ments bewilder  the  pen.  The  paragraphs  that 
tell  of  them  dazzle.  The  Crimean  junket,  the 
unequalled  journey  through  the  antique  Tau- 
rida,  was  but  one  of  the  many  flowers  that  he 


144  The  Imperial  Orgy- 

put  at  his  sovereign's  feet.  At  a  ball  which  he 
gave  for  her,  lackeys  handed  about  goblets  filled 
with  diamonds  to  the  brim. 

Hero  and  lover,  doubly  triumphant,  he  too 
thought  of  marrying  his  queen.  It  seemed  to 
him,  as  it  had  seemed  to  Orlov,  the  simplest 
thing  in  the  world.  Catherine  regarded  the  mat- 
ter as  before.  He  threatened  to  become  a  monk. 
For  a  cyclops  and  a  jackal,  the  threat  was  ridicu- 
lous. Catherine  laughed.  The  charm  was 
broken.  Friendship  remained.  Potemkin,  fan- 
tastic in  all  things,  demonstrated  his  in  a  man- 
ner that  was  perhaps  original.  He  made  lists 
of  eligible  young  men  and,  with  the  lists,  sub- 
mitted their  portraits.  It  was  for  Catherine  to 
choose.  For  a  while,  she  did.  But  Zubov,  who 
succeeded  them  all,  she  selected  unassisted. 

Saltykov  entered  her  life  when  she  was  young, 
Zubov  when  she  was  old.  Young  she  was  de- 
licious. Age  moldered  her.  Seen  across  a 
room  she  was  still  imperial.  Close  to,  was  a 
toothless  woman  with  furtive  eyes,  a  quavering 
voice  and  passions  still  unappeased.  Yet,  far 
or  near,  her  power  was  predominant.  The 
splendour  of  her  court,  the  pomp  of  her  princes, 
the  extent  of  her  dominions,  created  an  admi- 
ration that  was  stupefying.  Her  prestige  sur- 
passed the  forgotten  glories  of  Louis  XIV.    But 


Venus  Victrix  145 

in  the  same  manner  that  her  fame  transcended 
his,  her  bacchanals  exceeded  Faustine's.  There 
are  planes  beneath  which  there  is  perhaps  noth- 
ing deeper.  Tiberius  devised  vices  for  which 
names  had  to  be  coined.  The  Winter  Palace 
became  a  Tiberian  villa.  Zubov,  young  enough 
to  be  her  grandson,  had  companions  in  arms, 
and  in  his  and  in  their  company,  while  her  troops 
beat  the  Turks,  fought  the  Swedes,  devastated 
Poland,  the  sinister  and  prodigious  woman 
achieved  the  ultimate  descent. 

Zubov's  portrait  was  not  submitted  by  Po- 
temkin,  it  was  self-presented.  He  put  himself 
where  Catherine  could  see  him.  Any  officer 
who  had,  or  who  thought  he  had,  a  well-turned 
leg  did  the  same.  The  state  apartments  were 
lined  with  fetching  young  men.  They  formed 
a  hedge  along  which  the  sovereign  passed, 
looked,  smiled,  passed  on.  Zubov  followed  the 
smile.  It  led  him  far  and  high.  Another  sub- 
altern was  a  fille  entretenue.  With  none  of  Or- 
lov's  dash,  without  a  spark  of  Potemkin's  abil- 
ity, he  obtained  from  her  more  power  than 
either,  more  wealth  than  both.  In  the  last  years 
of  her  reign,  Zubov  was  automatically  and  au- 
tocratically tsar. 

His  portrait,  which  Potemkin  neglected,  Mas- 
son  displayed.     It  shows  a  youth  in  a  dressing- 


146  The  Imperial  Orgy 

gown  and  not  a  very  decent  one,  waited  on  by 
his  valets,  the  lords  and  princes  of  the  realm. 
His  back  is  turned.  But  in  a  mirror  before 
him,  his  face  appears,  cold,  vain,  empty.  In 
his  hand  is  a  book;  on  his  shoulder  a  monkey. 
Meanwhile  his  valets  stand  and  wait,  wait  and 
stand  until  he  deigns  to  turn,  deigns  to  look. 
At  that  condescension,  instantly  they  prostrated 
themselves  before  the  Pompadour  who  had  been 
emptying  the  treasury,  filling  the  prisons  and 
whom  no  one,  unpermitted,  dared  to  address. 
There  were  those  who  were  there  on  matters 
of  state.  Day  in,  day  out,  month  after  month 
they  came  before  the  permission  was  accorded. 
Then  negligently,  in  that  negligee,  the  tsar  dis- 
missed them. 

Slight  of  body  and  slimmer  of  soul,  he  may 
have  possessed,  Masson,  for  finishing  touch,  con- 
cludes, occult  qualities  which  only  Catherine 
could  appreciate.  No  doubt.  Besides,  to  the 
old  woman  that  she  was,  he  was  spring,  fair 
skies,  youth's  return  and  she  a  girl  again,  loved 
as  Poniatowski  had  loved  her,  for  her  charm 
alone.  There  is  sorcery  in  that  and  in  the  first 
enthrallment  of  it  she  regarded  him  as  a  genius. 
Afterward  she  saw  him  more  after  the  manner 
of  a  sultana  on  whose  neck  is  a  eunuch's  heel. 

Potemkin,   at   the   time,   was   at  Jassy.      He 


Venus  Victrix  147 

started  for  Petersburg.  On  a  highway  he  died. 
It  was  reported  that  Zubov  had  had  him 
poisoned.  Perhaps  he  had.  But  an  annalist 
says  that  during  a  fever  that  overtook  him  en 
route,  he  ate  a  whole  ham,  a  smoked  goose,  three 
chickens,  drank  liquor  by  the  quart,  drenching 
himself  alternately  with  ice-water  and  cologne. 
Gigantic  and  fantastic  in  life,  fantastically  and 
gigantically  he  died.  At  the  news  of  it,  the  sul- 
tana leered  at  the  eunuch. 

Zubov  is  the  smear  on  the  chronicles  of  a 
woman  sovereignly  enabled  to  do  as  she  liked 
and  who  was  very  polite  about  it.  One  after  an- 
other she  killed  the  last  three  Romanovs  and  ran 
Poland  through  the  heart.  To-day,  these  things 
are  forgotten.  The  blood  has  dried,  only  dust 
remains  and  the  fading  memory  of  an  empress 
whose  life  was  a  decameron  to  be  read  with 
pursed  lips.  But  in  her  were  Alexandrine  am- 
bitions. The  route  which  Potemkin  blazed  the 
way,  she  would  have  followed  to  St.  Sophia  and 
beyond  it  to  Delhi  and  the  peacock  throne.  She 
had  the  will,  the  ability,  the  power.  What  she 
lacked  was  time.  Apoplexy  battened  on  her  as 
she  had  on  Warsaw.  It  is  said  that  she  gave 
up  the  ghost  with  a  shriek.  Was  it  Poland  that 
she  saw? 

Indulgent  and   cruel,   prodigal   and   mean,   a 


148  The  Imperial  Orgy 

woman  in  whom  every  contradiction  was  re- 
sumed, Catherine  was  an  empress  who  made 
enormous  an  empire  already  vast;  a  tsaritsa  who 
enumerated  her  victories  and  could  not  count 
her  amours;  a  conqueror  who  had  Adonis  for 
secretary  of  the  treasury  and  Apollo  for  min- 
ister of  war;  a  cynic  who  slaughtered  Poland 
and  called  herself  a  pupil  of  Voltaire;  a  sov- 
ereign before  whom  the  entire  pageant  of  pas- 
sion and  glory  unrolled;  a  tyrant  and  a  lesbian 
who  passed  through  history  dripping  with  blood 
and  exhaling  the  perfume  of  Eros. 

Succinctly,  a  great  temperament;  concisely,  a 
great  man;  summarily,  the  least  detestable  des- 
pot of  the  lot,  and  yet,  primarily,  a  German 
girl  who  had  come  to  Russia  without  a  penny 
and  without  a  friend. 

Shortly  after  she  reached  Petersburg  her 
father  died.  He  died  on  his  barren  farm,  which 
was  called  a  principality. 

"It  is  ridiculous  of  you  to  cry,"  Elisabeth 
told  her.  "You  ought  to  know  better.  Your 
father  was  nobody." 

Elisabeth  was  too  civil  to  add  "and  a  pauper." 
Besides,  as  she  perhaps  divined,  the  girl  was 
superiorly  endowed.  Catherine  had  assets.  The 
assets  were  appetites.  She  gorged  them.  Dur- 
ing a  reign  that  lasted  from  the  middle  of  the 


Venus  Victrix  149 

eighteenth  century  to  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth, an  empty-handed  nobody  gave  her  lovers 
the  equivalent  of  half  a  billion  and  ruled  fifty 
different  races  with  a  despotism  that  was  iden- 
tical for  each. 

Previously  Psyche,  she  was  Venus  Victrix 
then.  At  her  feet  lay  all  the  Russias.  To  her 
the  whole  of  Europe  bowed.  At  her  left  was 
a  son  whom  she  hated ;  at  her  right  a  lover  whom 
she  paid.  Seated  between  them  on  the  tallest 
of  earthly  thrones,  covered  and  crowned  with 
diamonds  and  with  gold,  she  knew,  as  no  other 
woman  has  known,  how  love  and  glory  taste. 
The  bitterness  of  them  filled  her  toothless  mouth. 


VII 

PAUL 

CATHERINE,  who  entered  history  with 
a  swoon,  departed  with  a  shriek.     At 
the   shriek,   Night   unfurled   her  great 
black  fan.    Another  reign  of  terror  had  begun. 

The  shriek  proclaimed  Paul  emperor.  The 
proclamation  was  involuntary.  Catherine  did 
not  want  Paul  to  rule.  She  had  arranged  other- 
wise. He  ruled,  none  the  less,  and  in  such  a 
manner  that  at  his  own  exit  he  also  shrieked. 
With  that  shriek  for  motif,  Bovery  composed 
an  opera,  and  Petersburg  a  Te  Deum. 

Paul's  coronation  robe  should  have  been  a 
straitjacket.  Ivan  was  mad.  Peter  was  mad. 
Their  madness  appals,  but  it  fascinates.  In  hor- 
ror raised  to  the  ultimate  degree  there  is  gran- 
deur. Paul's  insanity  took  the  form  of  micro- 
philia.  Domitian  was  a  microphile.  He  spe- 
cialised in  flies.  Heliogabalus  was  a  microphile. 
He  collected  cobwebs.  Microphilia  is  the  in- 
sanity of  the  petty. 

The  maladies  and  particularly  the  deaths  of 

150 


Paul  151 

those  emperors  should  have  instructed  Paul. 
Besides,  since  their  day,  times  had  changed. 
They  had  changed,  too,  since  the  days  of  Ivan 
and  of  Peter.  Catherine's  reign  had  been  a  lib- 
eral education.  She  scandalised  Europe,  mur- 
dered her  husband,  killed  Peter's  nephew,  cru- 
cified Elisabeth's  daughter,  slaughtered  Prague, 
assassinated  Warsaw,  destroyed  Poland  and 
hated  her  son.  She  was  a  well-bred  woman.  But 
men  no  longer  had  their  heads  chopped  off  for 
a  yes  or  a  no.  Women's  tongues  might  wTag, 
they  were  not  torn  out  for  that  reason.  Cath- 
erine was  indulgent.     Paul  was  modest. 

"I  will  thank  you  to  understand,"  he  told  an 
envoy  who  had  spoken  of  some  boiar  as  an  im- 
portant person,  "that  there  is  but  one  important 
person  in  Russia.  That  is  the  person  whom  I 
happen  to  address  and  his  importance  lasts  only 
while  I  am  addressing  him." 

The  microphile  was  a  megalomaniac.  That 
was  not  his  mother's  fault.  Catherine  dwarfed 
and  hated  him,  as  she  hated  and  dwarfed  her 
husband.  The  hatred  that  she  had  for  her  son 
is  the  sole  evidence  that  he  was  legitimate. 
Psychologically,  the  evidence  had  its  weight. 

Paul  examined  it  and  turned  to  Poniatowski. 
"Are  you  my  father?1' 

The  problem  was  delicate,  the  solution  ob- 


152  The  Imperial  Orgy 

scure.  Poniatovvski,  who  was  then  old,  fat,  rheu- 
matic and  a  king  no  longer,  shook  his  head  and 
sat  down. 

With  imperial  brevity,  Paul  again  addressed 
him.     "Standi" 

He  turned  anew  to  the  evidence.  It  seemed  con- 
clusive. He  gave  orders  accordingly.  The  or- 
ders, spectacular  in  their  theatrical  effect,  will 
be  recited  in  a  moment. 

When  Catherine  shrieked,  Paul  was  married, 
middle-aged,  the  father  of  three  sons,"  two  of 
whom  successively  succeeded  him.  The  shriek 
reached  him  at  Gatchina,  a  country  fortress  near 
Petersburg,  where  he  lived  with  a  Wtirtemburg 
woman,  who  was  his  wife;  with  an  embittered 
young  Russian,  who  was  the  dearer  one  yet,  and 
with  a  regiment  which  he  dressed  and  drilled, 
Prussian  fashion,  whip  in  hand.  The  fashion 
was  otherwise  observed.  The  uniform  was  Prus- 
sian, But  one  that  Prussia  had  long  since  aban- 
doned. Paul  loved  it.  He  loved  the  past.  Ex- 
cept such  torture  as  he  could  inflict,  it  was  the 
only  thing  that  he  did  love. 

The  atmosphere  of  Gatchina  was  grand-ducal, 
pestilential  and  penitentiary.  Travellers  avoided 
it.  Above,  in  a  turret,  was  a  telescope.  There 
Paul  sat.  Any  one  whom  he  could  spy  afar 
making  a  detour  to  keep  out  of  his  way,  he  sent 


Paul  1 53 

cavalry  to  overtake  and  imprison.     "Let  me  be 
hated,"  said  Caligula.    "But  let  me  be  feared." 

Paul  was  Caligula  in  miniature.  Like  him, 
he  was  hideous  but,  excessive  in  every  form  of 
hideousnesss,  he  was  more  hideous.  He  had 
the  face  of  a  cat,  a  dead  cat,  a  dead  Kalmuck 
skunk,  and  with  that  death's-head  on  a  short 
pudgy  body,  he  strutted.  After  Catherine's  exit, 
he  strutted  crowned.  In  his  palaces,  he  was 
the  monarch  that  the  old  pictures  show.  On  pa- 
rade, he  was  the  drill-sergeant,  but  everywhere 
the  bully.  In  behalf  of  some  one,  Alexander,  his 
son,  at  the  time  but  a  boy,  fell  at  his  feet,  begged 
him  to  be  merciful.  Paul  kicked  him  in  the 
face. 

"Sacha,  was  it  you  who  killed  him?"  that 
boy's  mother  afterward  asked. 

At  Gatchina,  he  spied  a  giant  on  horseback 
racing  toward  the  fortress.  The  giant  was  Niko- 
lai Zubov,  brother  of  the  Pompadour  en  titre. 
The  shock  of  the  sight  of  him  gave  Paul  the 
colic.  He  thought  he  had  come  to  arrest  him. 
Zubov  had  been  hastening  to  announce  that 
Catherine  was  in  extremis.  The  colic  passed, 
but  another  fear  gripped  him.  To  allay  it,  off 
he  rode. 

At  the  Winter  Palace,  Catherine  was  uncon- 
scious.   Up  the  great  stairway,  through  a  double 


154  The  Imperial  Orgy 

hedge  of  Circassians,  and  on  through  high  halls 
rilled  with  courtiers  and  lackeys,  Paul  passed  to 
her  apartments.  Before  he  reached  them,  the 
death-rattle   had  begun. 

In  one  room  was  an  escritoire  and  near  it 
an  open  fire.  Paul  opened  the  desk.  Among 
the  papers  was  an  order  for  his  arrest.  He  gave 
it  to  the  flames.  Another  paper  was  a  will  in 
which  his  mother  appointed  his  son,  Alexander, 
her  successor.    That  also  he  destroyed. 

He  turned.  Before  him  was  the  Pompadour. 
Behind  Zubov  was  a  throng  of  nobles.  Paul 
lifted  his  dead-cat  face.  With  a  pudgy  hand 
he  gestured. 

"I  am  your  emperorl" 

Instantly  Zubov,  to  wrhom  all  Russia  cringed, 
was  cringing.  Instantly  the  nobles  were  on  their 
knees. 

It  was  then  that  Night  unfurled  her  great 
black  fan.    A  reign  of  terror  had  begun. 

The  old  courtesan  that  history  is,  had  her  at- 
tenuations for  Paul,  as  she  had  her  myopia  for 
Ivan,  her  cecity  for  Peter.  An  age-long  supper 
on  abominations  made  her  indulgent.  Youth 
is  always  intolerant.  Tacitus  branded,  Juvenal 
flayed.  History  then  was  a  debutante.  To-day 
she  candies  her  tales,  throws  orange  blossoms 
on  the  tomb  of  Lucrezia  Borgia  and  immortelles 


Paul  155 

on  Paul's.  Beneath  the  weeds,  Paul  has  the 
faded  air  of  a  noble  character  thwarted  and  mis- 
understood. But  pulled  down  a  chimney  by  his 
bandy  legs  and  run  through  for  his  crimes?  No- 
where in  Russian  history  is  that  recorded.  His- 
tory is  the  one  book  that  has  no  end. 

Sixty  years  later,  a  boy,  afterward  Alexander 
III.,  told  a  comrade  that  he  had  discovered  a 
state  secret — the  Emperor  Paul  was  assassi- 
nated! 

Among  the  attenuations  put  on  Paul's  tomb 
was  his  grand-ducal  existence.  Catherine  made 
it  a  long  humiliation.  A  man  who  is  a  man 
rises  from  an  insult  refreshed.  It  is  perhaps  a 
tonic.  In  a  microphile  it  secretes  venom,  of 
which  the  chemical  precipitate  is  spite.  When 
Catherine's  crown  passed  to  Paul  he  spat  on  it 
and  ordered  another. 

Masson,  an  idler  in  Petersburg,  says  that  in 
the  processions  of  peoples,  the  ark  of  the  cove- 
nant was  not  surrounded  by  greater  pomp  than 
was  that  new  crown  during  its  journey  from  the 
jeweller's  to  the  palace.  At  the  palace,  the  jew- 
eller-Pygmalion was  compelled  to  kneel  in  wor- 
ship to  it. 

It  was  in  that  crown  that  the  misunderstood 
lunatic  strutted.  Always  a  comic  figure — at  a 
safe  distance — his  mother  made  him  ridiculous. 


156  The  Imperial  Orgy 

While  lovers  of  hers,  who  were  younger  than 
his  sons,  governed  Russia  and  waded  in  gold,  he 
was  put  on  an  allowance,  put  in  a  corner,  treated 
as  nobody.  Night  after  night,  he  and  his  sons 
with  him,  had  seen  her  dismiss  the  court  and 
march  off  with  some  Pompadour  who  always 
ignored  them.  For  less  than  that,  Catherine 
had  put  her  husband  in  the  grave.  Paul  could 
have  put  her  in  the  street.  It  was  not  natural 
affection  or  filial  respect  that  restrained  him. 
He  loathed  her  as  completely  as  she  abominated 
him.  But  Catherine,  with  all  her  faults,  with 
all  her  sins,  and  all  her  crimes,  was  brave.  Paul, 
a  born  bully  and,  for  that  reason,  a  born  coward, 
was  afraid  of  her.  With  her  husband,  with  Ivan 
VI.  and  Elisabeth's  daughter  for  examples,  he 
had  cause.    He  was  not  a  match  for  her. 

He  was  not  a  match  for  anyone.  Since  Pul- 
towa,  everywhere  the  Russian  arms  were  vic- 
torious. During  Paul's  reign,  generally  they 
were  defeated. 

Immortelles,  however  plentiful,  cannot  alter 
that.  None  the  less  the  circumstances  of  his 
pre-monarchal  career  may  have  prepared  him  to 
be  what  he  became,  a  tyrant,  conceited,  fantastic, 
implacable,  mad  as  a  hatter,  his  pockets  stuffed 
with  ukases  about  nothing  at  all.  To  say  as 
much,  or  rather  as  little,  was  impossible.  In  holy 


Paul  157 

Russia,  a  tsar  was  sacrosanct,  an  abyss  of  knowl- 
edge, a  star  of  truth.  It  was  quite  in  that  light 
that  Paul  regarded  himself.  All  lunatics  are 
imaginative.  With  power  added,  sometimes 
they  are  spectacular.  It  is  then  that  they  be- 
come interesting. 

Catherine's  body  was  embalmed  and  put  on  a 
great  bed  in  the  throne-room.  The  embalming, 
very  artistically  effected,  made  her  black  and 
orange.  People  who  had  beheld  her  in  her 
splendour,  marvelled  then  at  her  hideousness. 
They  did  not  realise  that  for  the  first  time  they 
saw  her  as  she  really  was. 

Beside  her,  on  that  bed,  Paul  put  another 
corpse.  The  watchman  whom  he  selected  to 
stand  guard  at  night  was  Alexis  Orlov.  Cath- 
erine's bedfellow  was  her  husband's  skeleton.  It 
was  Alexis  Orlov  who  had  killed  him.  In  the 
vast  room,  which  candles  feebly  lit,  Orlov's  vigil 
must  have  been  Dantesque.  But  the  ghosts  of 
that  couple,  surprised  enough  to  find  themselves 
again  together,  what  spectral  secrets  they  must 
have  muttered,  not  only  to  each  other,  but  at 
him! 

The  scene,  thoroughly  TEschylean,  was  suc- 
ceeded by  another  that  did  not  surpass  it,  per- 
haps nothing  could,  but  which  Hugo  should 
have  painted.    During  the  funeral  that  followed, 


158  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Orlov  was  compelled  to  walk,  carrying  the 
crown  he  had  wrenched  from  Peter  the  Little, 
and  to  walk  directly  behind  the  coffin  into  which 
he  had  strangled  him.  Such  stagecraft  deserves 
applause. 

From  the  funeral,  Paul  turned  to  affairs  of 
state.  Catherine's  reign  had  been  a  golden  age. 
The  massacres  committed  by  her  indemnified 
those  who  had  missed  the  butcheries  of  anterior 
tsars.  But  the  beautiful  custom  of  throwing 
yourself  from  your  conveyance  and  grovelling 
in  the  snow,  in  the  mud,  to  the  sovereign  that 
passed,  Semiramis  abolished.  With  a  ukase, 
Paul  revived  it. 

Presently,  a  woman  drove  by.  She  had  not 
heard  of  the  ukase.  She  had  never  seen  Paul. 
She  lived  in  the  country.  There,  her  husband 
was  dying.  She  was  hurrying  for  a  physician. 
She  did  not  notice  a  madman  on  horseback.  She 
was  thinking  of  her  husband,  of  the  physician 
who  might  save  him.    On  she  drove. 

Paul,  twisting  in  the  saddle,  motioned.  "Ar- 
rest her!" 

Explanations,  excuses,  prayers,  tears,  these 
things  availed  her  nothing.  Afar  her  husband 
waited,  wondered,  hoped,  despaired,  agonised 
and   died.     In   the  stone  sack  where  she  was 


Paul  159 

thrown,  mercifully  a  fever  came  in  which  she 
joined  him. 

Paul  dealt  with  the  army  as  he  dealt  with 
that  woman.  For  the  slightest  inadvertence,  ar- 
rest. Generals  came  to  the  daily  drill  with  trav- 
elling bags.  They  never  knew  at  what  moment 
or  for  what  reason  Paul  would  order  them  seized 
and  carted  away.  On  one  occasion  a  line  wav- 
ered. "Halt!"  Paul  ordered.  "March!"  he  con- 
tinued and  added: — "To  Siberia!" 

Discipline  first,  accoutrements  next.  Since 
Peter's  day,  the  uniform  of  the  Russian  soldier 
had  been  warm  without  being  heavy,  easy  with- 
out being  loose.  Paul  trussed  the  troops  in  a 
uniform  so  tight  that  if  a  soldier  fell  he  could 
barely  rise  unassisted.  On  one  occasion  a  horse 
stumbled.  Paul  had  the  animal  starved  to  death. 
On  another  occasion  a  horse  threw  an  officer. 
"Get  up,  you  scoundrel!"  Paul  shouted.  The 
officer's  leg  was  broken.    Paul  spat  on  him. 

Discipline  at  any  cost.  The  cost  was  perhaps 
excessive.  In  trussing  the  troops  and  exiling 
the  generals,  there  was  an  invitation  to  defeat. 
The  thrashings  that  ensued  made  Paul  morose. 
But  mobile  as  madmen  are,  his  humour  veered 
and  he  shook  a  fist  at  Europe. 

"I  will  fight  any  sovereign  in  single  combat. 
I  will  fight  all  of  them." 


160  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Incidentally,  he  had  become  grand-master  of 
the  Knights  of  Malta.  The  office  was  useful. 
When  visiting  his  harem  where,  with  the  punc- 
tuality of  kings,  he  went  every  afternoon  at  four 
precisely,  the  office  enabled  him  to  wear  the 
Holy  Order  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem.  It  was 
otherwise  serviceable.  It  prompted.  With  it, 
he  planned  to  be  pope,  successor  of  Pius  VI.  and 
the  twelve  apostles.    A  decent,  unassuming  tsar. 

A  busy  one  also.  The  form  of  a  hat,  the  size 
of  a  neckcloth,  the  colour  of  a  feather,  the  cut 
of  a  coat,  one's  boots,  one's  gaiters,  a  coachman's 
livery,  a  horse's  harness,  became  affairs  of  state, 
the  subjects  of  ukase.  The  only  printing-press 
that  he  permitted  to  function  was  one  that  pub- 
lished his  edicts.  For  a  disregard  of  anyone  of 
them,  Siberia! 

The  droves  he  sent  there,  for  no  reason  what- 
ever, except  the  pleasure  of  it,  perplexed  the  for- 
eign legates.  One  of  them  wrote  that,  barring 
the  prisons,  which  were  full,  Petersburg  was  be- 
coming a  desert,  everybody  was  being  exiled. 
Some  were  sent  to  the  mines  for  calling  a  yacht 
a  schooner.  The  yacht  was  a  schooner,  but  it 
was  Paul's  and,  by  imperial  ukase,  a  frigate. 
Others  went  for  saying  that  they  had  the  liberty 
to  do  this  or  that.  The  use  of  the  word  lib- 
erty was  forbidden.     It  was  forbidden  to  speak 


Paul  161 

of  any  revolution,  even  and  including  that  of 
the  earth. 

That  is  an  exaggeration.  Nothing  was  for- 
bidden. Tsaral  Russia  had  no  synonym  for  the 
Hun  Verboten.  The  imperial  formula  was 
either  Prikazeno — It  is  ordered,  or  Ne  prika- 
zeno — It  is  not  ordered.  Simple  formulae  and 
yet  so  magical  that  it  was  inconceivable  that 
they  should  not  be  observed  and  logically  incon- 
ceivable. At  any  infraction,  the  knout.  But 
an  infraction  was  not  a  prerequisite.  Anything 
sufficed.  Paul  thought  he  would  take  a  walk 
and  said  so  to  a  general  who  remarked  that  it 
might  rain.  What  an  unpleasant  person!  The 
knout! 

The  knout  for  him,  for  everybody,  for  any- 
thing, for  nothing  at  all.  After  the  knout,  Si- 
beria, the  pilgrimage  undertaken  in  chains.  The 
chains  irked.  So  much  the  better!  The  chains 
made  sores.  Better  yet!  For  any  dog  of  a  Sa- 
maritan that  attempted  to  comfort  the  sufferer, 
to  anoint  his  sores,  to  bandage  his  wounds,  the 
knout! 

The  writhings  under  that  knout  were  joys  to 
Paul.  "Flog,"  he  ordered.  "Flog  without 
mercy."  Then  gloatingly  he  would  ask: — "Did 
they  howl?    Tell  me  about  it."    The  details  sup- 


162  The  Imperial  Orgy 

plied,  he  patted  his  stomach.  "Now  send  them 
where  they  won't  find  their  bones." 

A  Frenchman  was  asked  what  he  did  during 
the  Terror.  "I  lived,"  he  replied.  During  the 
Pauline  terror,  Petersburg  shammed  death  as 
Muscovy  had  under  the  khans.  When  it  passed, 
delight  was  as  insane  as  Paul.  In  the  frozen 
streets,  beneath  the  frigid  sky,  people  kissed  and 
romped  and  danced  and  sang.  An  officer  ran  his 
horse  up  on  the  sidewalk.  "Now,"  he  exclaimed, 
"we  can  do  what  we  like!"  In  the  first  year  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  that  was  a  Russian  offi- 
cer's idea  of  liberty. 

Kant,  in  defining  liberty,  said  that  it  consists 
in  obeying  those  laws  only  to  which  we  have 
given  our  assent.  In  any  autocracy,  particularly 
in  the  United  States,  where  one  has  all  the  forms 
of  liberty  and  none  of  the  substance,  assent  is  im- 
plied. Under  the  tsars  and  under  the  Ca?sars, 
even  the  forms  were  lacking.  "Your  god  and 
master  orders  it,"  Domitian,  in  addressing  the 
servile  senate,  negligently  remarked.  Paul's  atti- 
tude was  identical.  To  heighten  it  was  his  dead- 
cat  face.  Medievally,  death  was  a  grinning 
skull  topping  a  nightmare  frame  of  bones,  to 
which  philosophy  added  a  scythe  and  poetry 
wings.  From  its  eyries  it  swooped,  spectral  and 
sinister.      Deduct    the    rictus    and    replace    the 


Paul  163 

scythe  with  a  knout  and  that  is  the  manner  in 
which  Paul  appeared.  High  and  low  quaked 
if  he  but  looked.    The  sullen  streets  were  empty. 

Those  who  had  to  be  in  them,  made  them- 
selves small,  fled  at  a  footstep,  dematerialised 
into  shadows.  Whatever  they  did,  however  they 
hid,  terror  stalked  them.  It  stalked  all  the  Rus- 
sians of  all  the  Russias.  It  spread  as  disease 
spreads,  from  cities  to  hamlets,  from  the  prov- 
inces to  the  steppes,  from  the  septentrion  to  the 
sea.  Ashen-faced,  along  the  roads  it  ran,  call- 
ing, "I  am  Fear!" 

Throughout  Russia,  life,  then,  was  a  panic  and 
panic  is  contagious.  Breathe  it  and  even  auto- 
crats are  infected.  It  infected  Nero.  To  escape 
it,  he  killed  himself.  It  infected  Paul.  The 
terror  he  exuded  returning  back  to  its  spring, 
terrorised  him.  To  escape  it,  he  who  made 
others  hide,  hid  from  them. 

Nero  also  hid,  but  he  could  not  hide  from 
himself.  Paul  fancied  that  where  that  monster 
failed,  he  could  succeed.  By  day,  he  did.  He 
got  behind  ukases,  screened  himself  with  them. 
But  at  night,  the  furies  were  waiting.  The  crea- 
ture needed  a  disguise  and  he  invented  one.  He 
discovered,  or  said  he  had,  how  to  look  seven- 
teen years  younger. 

One  disguise  is  always  inadequate.    Another 


164  The  Imperial  Orgy 

occurred  to  him,  a  domino  of  granite.  He  put 
it  on,  as  soon,  that  is,  as  it  could  be  made  for  him. 
In  the  tailoring,  an  army  of  masons  was  em- 
ployed. The  result,  the  Michel  Palace,  was  a 
threat  in  stone,  a  dungeon  surrounded  by  moats, 
a  fortress  so  vast  that  it  discouraged  adventure 
and  so  sombre  that  even  the  furies  might  lose 
their  way.  Once  a  day  only  and  then  at  high 
noon,  the  drawbridges  were  lowered.  To  the 
yodel  of  horns  and  the  crack  of  postilions'  whips, 
the  mail  was  brought.  That  service  completed, 
the  drawbridges  were  raised,  the  mask  was  re- 
sumed, a  threat  in  stone  confronted  you. 

The  threat  was  effective.  Terror  could  not 
scale  it.  Paul  was  safe.  Yet  was  he?  From 
without,  certainly.  But  from  within?  There 
was  his  wife.  There  were  his  sons.  Who  knew 
what  they  might  be  plotting?  Well,  he  too  could 
plot.  At  the  slightest  sign,  the  axe!  The  axe 
for  all  of  them.    Meanwhile,  a  hint. 

The  hint  resumed  itself  in  a  History  of  Peter 
the  Great,  which  he  placed  on  a  table  in  a  room 
occupied  by  his  son  Alexander.  Paul  left  the 
book  open  at  a  page  which  told  of  the  death  of 
a  tsarevitch,  executed  for  treason,  killed  at  his 
father's  command. 

In  spite  of  the  hint,  in  spite  of  the  threat,  in 
spite  of  the  disguise,  in  spite  of  moats,  guards, 


Paul  165 

sentinels,  in  spite  of  all,  the  furies  found  him. 
Paul's  nights  were  terrible.  Clearly  something 
else  was  needed;  the  iron  hand,  perhaps.  At 
once,  every  avenue  that  led  to  the  palace  was 
barricaded.  Martial  law  was  proclaimed.  Pe- 
tersburg became  a  city  abandoned  by  God,  a 
polar  hell,  peopled  with  phantoms  but  peopled, 
too,  by  terror. 

Terror,  intangible,  fluidic,  hung  in  shadows, 
crept  in  darkness,  lived  in  silence,  sprang  from 
nowhere,  vaulted  the  barriers,  leaped  at  Paul, 
tore  his  mask  off.  Paul,  sidling  and  crouching, 
screamed.     The  scream  brought  Pahlen. 

Pahlen,  military  governor  of  Petersburg,  had 
a  fabulous  nose,  a  cheerful  air,  nerves  of  bronze. 
At  the  moment  he  needed  them. 

"There  are  conspirators  here,"  the  crouching 
thug  spat  at  him. 

How  does  he  know?  Pahlen  must  have  won- 
dered. 

How  he  did  know  is  explicable  only  by  the 
unfathomable  acumen  which  madmen  some- 
times possess.  Yet,  there  was  no  secret  about 
it.  Everybody,  even  to  the  man  in  the  Nevski, 
knew  that  a  drama  was  being  staged,  though 
not  the  lines.  Those  terror  wrote  and  badly  as 
terror  always  does  write.  Alexander  had 
adapted  them.     Pahlen  was  stage-manager.    In 


166  The  Imperial  Orgy 

the  cast  were  Plato  Zubov,  ex-Pompadour; 
Bennigsen,  former  page  of  Elisabeth,  and  a 
dozen  officers,  with  a  regiment  for  scene-shift- 
ers. 

With  sudden  suspicion,  Paul  pointed.  "And 
you  are  one  of  them." 

Pahlen  saluted.  "For  your  better  protection, 
sir."  He  fumbled  and  produced  a  paper.  "Here 
is  the  list." 

Without  looking  at  the  names,  Paul  straight- 
ened.    "The  axe!" 

Pahlen  bowed.  "They  would  have  had  it  al- 
ready, sir,  but  two  of  them  are  your  sons." 

"Arrest  them." 

Pahlen  wheeled.  It  was  time  to  act.  Before- 
hand there  was  supper. 

It  would  have  been  interesting  to  have  been 
there.  In  addition  to  Paul  and  his  wife,  there 
were  a  dozen  people  at  table,  none  of  whom  was 
permitted  to  speak.  Elsewhere,  in  other  palaces, 
there  was  that  rarity,  laughter.  With  it  was 
champagne,  lifted  glasses,  toasts  to  the  actors  in 
the  drama  staged  for  that  night. 

In  the  supper-room  at  the  Michel  Palace 
there  was  silence.  Presently  Paul  related  a 
dream  he  had  had  and  in  which  he  thought  he 
was  suffocating.  He  looked  at  his  wife.  Was 
she  on  that  list?     No  matter,  the  scaffold  was 


Paul  167 

neighbourly.  Comforted  by  the  reflection,  he 
began  throwing  creams  and  pastries  on  the  floor. 
The  pages  could  eat  them. 

Lampridius,  or,  more  exactly,  the  brute  who 
abridged  him,  gave  the  story  of  an  emperor's 
death.  The  lines  ring  with  yells.  There  is  the 
sudden  pretorian  rush,  the  clatter  through  the 
Roman  palace,  the  gleam  of  quick  knives. 

After  supper,  Paul  went  to  his  apartment, 
which  was  on  the  floor  below.  Composed  of  a 
vestibule,  an  antechamber,  a  library  and  a  bed- 
room, the  one  entrance  was  through  the  vesti- 
bule. The  bedroom,  which  was  beyond  the  li- 
brary, had  an  exit  but  that,  as  additional  pre- 
caution, had  been  barricaded.  Nearby  was  a 
fireplace  and  before  it  a  screen.  At  the  right 
was  a  bed.  Above  the  bed  was  a  picture  of  a 
knight  of  St.  John.  Opposite  was  a  bust,  badly 
executed,  of  Frederick  II.  The  room  was  large, 
high-ceiled,  panelled  in  white.  On  the  walls 
were  landscapes  by  Vernet  and  Van  der  Meer. 
In  the  library  there  was  nothing  literary.  In 
the  antechamber,  two  servants,  both  armed. 

On  leaving  the  supper-table,  Paul  went  to  bed, 
to  sleep,  to  dream,  to  wake,  to  shriek,  to  die. 

"My  God!"  said  Zubov,  "how  that  man  does 
shriek." 

Zubov   and   the  others,   all   of   them,   except 


168  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Paul's  sons,  Alexander  and  Constantine,  who 
were  under  arrest,  had,  through  interior  con- 
nivance, crossed  the  moat,  entered  the-  palace, 
seized  and  disarmed  the  guards;  after  which, 
rushing  up  a  stairway,  they  broke  into  the  ante- 
chamber and  cut  down  the  servants. 

Most  of  them  were  drunk.  The  noise  they 
made  wakened  Paul.  When  they  reached  the 
bedroom  they  could  not  find  him.  They  thought 
he  had  escaped.  But  in  the  rush  the  screen  was 
overturned.  Back  of  it,  up  the  chimney,  Paul's 
bare  feet  protruded.  They  pulled  him  down. 
One  of  them  struck  him  with  a  gold  snuff-box. 
He  shrieked.  They  ran  him  through,  cutting 
off  three  of  his  fingers  while  they  were  at  it, 
he  shrieking  all  the  time.  In  a  moment  he  fell. 
Another  of  them,  taking  him  by  the  head,  dashed 
it  against  the  fireplace,  dashed  it  again  and  again 
and  then  once  more. 

Afar,  a  Te  Deum  mounted.  Night  refurled 
her  great  black  fan. 


VIII 

THE  LAST  DESPOT 

IN  Greece,  death  was  a  girl.  The  child  of 
Night,  the  sister  of  Sleep,  less  funereal  than 
narcotic,  she  beckoned  and  consoled.  In 
epicurean  Rome,  death  was  a  marionette  that  in- 
vited you  to  wreathe  yourself  with  roses  before 
they  could  fade.  In  the  Muslim  east,  death  was 
Azrael,  who  was  an  angel.  In  Vedic  India  it 
was  Yama,  who  was  a  god.  In  Iran  it  was 
Mairya,  who  was  a  fiend. 

That  last,  and  long  since  forgotten  conception, 
the  tsars  revived  and  adopted  for  others.  Else- 
where death  had  been  gracious.  In  Russia  it 
was  horrible. 

Alexander  altered  that.  Already  Elisabeth 
had  abolished  the  axe.  It  was  not  clemency  that 
actuated  her.  It  was  the  selfish  commonsense 
which  political  economy  is.  Hands  without 
heads  cannot  work,  but  heads  with  hands  can 
and  did.  They  worked  for  Elisabeth.  Instead 
of  a  swift  decapitation  on  the  scaffold,  prison- 
ers were  given  the  slow  guillotine  of  the  mines. 

[69 


170  The  Imperial  Orgy 

The  axe  which  Elisabeth  buried  there,  Nicholas 
replaced  with  the  gallows.  But  under  Alex- 
ander torture  ceased. 

One  may  applaud  him  and  very  greatly  for 
that,  particularly  as  there  is  nothing  else  to  his 
credit.  Nothing  whatever,  except  that  he  was 
less  Asiatic  than  Paul  and  more  European  than 
Nicholas.  Suavity  was  his  note.  It  is  the  note 
of  every  hypocrite. 

Nominally  under  arrest  while  Paul  was  being 
killed,  he  pretended  to  be  asleep  when  the  news 
of  it,  which  he  was  awaiting,  was  brought  to 
him.  Afterward  he  pretended  that  he  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  it.  The  pretence  served  as  hot- 
house for  the  usual  immortelles.  Among  other 
garlands  is  one  to  the  effect  that  Paul  was  not 
his  father.  However  false  or  true  that  may  be, 
he  did  not  resemble  him.  Paul  had  the  sour  look 
of  a  skunk  with  a  stomach-ache.  Alexander 
looked  like  a  cherub  in  an  overcoat.  His 
brothers,  Constantine  and  Nicholas,  did  not  re- 
semble Paul  either,  physically,  that  is,  though 
otherwise  they  were  quite  as  Tatar,  which  is 
not  remarkable  if  their  reported  geneology  be 
correct.  Alexander's  father  is  said  to  have  been 
an  Alsatian  grenadier.  Their  father  was  a  Prus- 
sian. 

Catherine,  who  generally  knew  what  she  was 


\l  EXANDER  I 


The  Last  Despot  171 

about,  brought  Alexander  up  to  succeed  her. 
Constantine,  she  brought  up  to  occupy  Constan- 
tinople. Nicholas,  the  youngest  of  the  breed, 
she  left  to  his  own  devices  and  very  unoriginal 
they  were.  At  the  time  of  Paul's  death  he  was 
a  brat,  the  despot  in  embryo,  ruling  tin  sol- 
diers as  he  was  to  rule  Russia. 

At  that  time,  the  earth  was  oscillating  beneath 
the  tread  of  a  human  volcano  beside  whom  no 
nation  could  live.  Hugo,  with  his  usual  so- 
briety, said  that  Napoleon  inconvenienced  God. 
Napoleon  would  have  taken  the  remark  very 
seriously.  Humour,  which  is  Satan's  saving 
grace,  he  contrived  to  lack.  Napoleon  did  not 
inconvenience  God,  but  he  disturbed  the  equi- 
librium of  Europe. 

A  little  before  he  had  run  literally  from  school 
into  a  riot,  leaped  on  a  horse  and  made  him- 
self general.  After  which  he  conquered  Italy, 
conquered  Egypt,  attacked  everybody  and  van- 
quished everywhere.  A  simple  tale,  it  still 
astounds.  In  the  echoes  of  his  passage  come  the 
crash  of  falling  cities,  the  cries  of  the  conquered, 
the  death-rattle  of  nations,  the  surge  and  roar 
of  seas  of  blood.  Through  their  reverberations, 
Napoleon  looms,  dragging  destruction  after  him, 
hurling  it  like  a  bomb  in  the  face  of  kings  that 
were  cowering  still  from  the  spectacle  of  the 


172  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Revolution  and  of  which  he  was  the  appalling 
issue. 

At  the  time  of  Paul's  death,  he  was  planning 
a  bout  with  England.  Turning  suddenly  on 
Austria,  he  sent  the  old  Germanic  empire 
sprawling.  Prussia  came  next.  Then  it  was 
Russia's  turn.  On  a  raft  in  the  muddy  Nieman, 
Alexander  pledged  him  eternal  friendship. 

Friendship  may  cover  a  multitude  of  rob- 
beries. Over  the  usual  question  of  booty,  the 
two  fell  out.  Napoleon,  meanwhile,  had  be- 
come impersonal.  In  lieu  of  the  volcanic  there 
was  virulence.  He  was  spreading,  as  cholera 
spreads,  from  one  end  of  the  continent  to  the 
other.  In  the  contagion,  was  the  totter  of  dynas- 
ties, the  reversal  of  thrones.  There  too  was  the 
victor,  pale,  impassible  as  destiny,  confronting 
fate  like  an  equal,  provoking  it  almost  with  dis- 
dain, peering  through  magic  casements  at  the 
universal  monarchy  which  he  dreamed  was  to 
be  his. 

Into  that  dream  another  entered,  a  minor 
dream,  the  dream  of  a  parvenu.  There  was 
barely  a  royal  residence  on  the  continent  which 
he  had  not  occupied.  There  was  hardly  a  sov- 
ereign in  whose  bed  he  had  not  slept.  For  the 
vulgar  satisfaction  of  sleeping  in  one  other,  he 


The  Last  Despot  173 

entered  the  Kreml.  There,  beneath  a  mattress, 
he  left  his  crown. 

In  his  northern  progress,  it  had  been  imag- 
ined that  he  would  not  advance  beyond  Lithua- 
nia, but  when  he  had  taken  Smolensk,  the  key 
to  the  empire,  the  eldest  town  in  Russia,  Alex- 
ander's generals  realised  that  another  conver- 
sation was  inevitable  and  any  resistance  vain. 
Instead  of  contending,  they  circumvented.  The 
outlying  lands  were  laid  bare.  The  result  is 
epic.  Famine  began  what  ice  completed.  Na- 
poleon found  himself  in  an  empty  refrigerator. 
That  refrigerator  Alexander  burned. 

Then  began  the  conversation  that  continued 
all  along  the  road  to  Paris.  For  climax  it  had 
Elba,  with  Waterloo  for  finale. 

The  conversation  was  not  a  tete-a-tete.  The 
flames  had  been  a  signal.  All  Europe  took  part. 
But  in  the  great  debacle,  Alexander  greatly  rose. 
He  acquired  the  palms  of  a  hero,  the  nimbus  of 
a  god,  a  dignity  quite  Roman,  before  which  the 
flunkeys  of  history  have  solemnly  salaamed. 

A  Greek  of  the  Lower  Empire,  Napoleon 
called  him,  which  being  translated  means  a 
swindler.  Good-looking,  though,  a  middle-aged 
Cupid  in  whiskers,  the  burglar  tastes  of  his 
problematic  house  fused  in  him  with  a  sancti- 
moniousness that  was  all  his  own.     After  the 


174  .    The  Imperial  Orgy- 

proper  tsaral  fashion,  he  had  married  a  Ger- 
man, Betty  of  Baden.  The  Comtesse  de  Choi- 
seul-Gouffier,  who  wrote  of  both  with  a  maid- 
servant's ecstasy,  described  her  as  a  pathetic  an- 
gel, tear-stained  by  the  handkerchiefs  which,  in 
the  exercise  of  his  droit  du  seigneur,  he  tossed 
here  and  there,  yet  always' so  discreetly!  Turpi- 
tudes in  the  dark,  but  never  a  scandal.  Tartuf- 
fianism  above  all. 

An  oleaginous  mummer,  Uriah  Heep  and  the 
Artful  Dodger  combined,  indulgently  he  agreed 
to  rule  in  accordance  with  the  law — which  he 
made.  With  the  same  benevolence  he  built 
schools  and  universities — on  paper,  not  omitting 
to  stuff  his  pockets  with  everything  he  could  lay 
his  hands  on,  with  Finland,  of  which  he  robbed 
Sweden;  with  the  plunder  of  further  burglaries 
to  the  south  and  east;  promising  a  lift  to  Aus- 
tria and  leaving  her  in  the  lurch;  doing  quite 
as  well  by  Prussia,  who  deserved  it;  hoodwink- 
ing everybody,  including  history,  the  world  and 
the  devil;  hoodwinking  Napoleon  and  it  was 
an  archcrook  who  could  do  that;  deceiving  per- 
haps even  himself  and  ending  his  robber  rule 
in  mystic  projects  and  Swedenborgian  beliefs. 

He  might  have  done  worse.  Swedenborg 
lifted  fringes  of  the  curtain  which  recent  oc- 
cultism  has  partially  raised.     Alexander's  in- 


The  Last  Despot  175 

troduction  to  the  Arcana  Celestia  was  due  to  a 
woman,  the  Baroness  Krudner,  whose  forte,  to 
put  it  delicately,  had  been  her  weakness.  Apo- 
plexy battened  on  her  husband  when  he  learned 
its  extent.  The  passing  of  the  man  brought  her 
the  light.  The  amoureuse  became  a  voyante. 
She  saw.  In  seeing  she  foretold  the  return  from 
Elba,  the  hundred  days,  the  restoration.  Time 
verified  the  clairvoyance,  which  interested  Alex- 
ander, as  well  it  might,  yet  particularly  per- 
haps because,  in  an  interview  that  ensued,  the 
baroness  told  the  emperor — what  he  already  sus- 
pected— that  he  was  predestined  to  accomplish 
God's  will  on  earth.  So  are  autocrats  and  mum- 
mers won.  Alexander  took  her  to  Paris,  where 
it  is  history  that  she  inspired  the  Holy  Alliance, 
a  chimerical  imbecility  on  which,  over  a  cen- 
tury later,  the  outlines  of  the  League  of  Nations 
were  ignorantly  framed. 

Alexander  was  the  silver  lining  between  Paul, 
who  was  mad  and  Nicholas,  who  was  insane. 
Every  silver  lining  has  a  cloud.  Alexander  had 
brains,  a  will  of  his  own,  the  power  to  use  it,  the 
ability  to  make  Russia  as  preponderant  in  Eu- 
rope as  Peter  had  made  her  preponderant  in 
the  north.  During  the  better  part  of  his  reign, 
he  drove  the  empire  straight  on  with  the  ease 
of  a  whip  tooling  a  drag.     Personally  he  had 


176  The  Imperial  Orgy 

his  graces.  In  spite  of  a  mediaeval  idea  of  his 
own  dignity,  he  could  unbend,  and,  when  he 
did,  he  charmed.  Though  a  robber,  he  was  a  big 
one.  Though  a  crook,  he  was  great.  Even  in 
hypocrisy  he  contrived  to  be  large.  He  inspired 
confidence,  and  very  naturally,  he  was  a  confi- 
dence man.    There  is  the  silver  lining. 

Here  is  the  cloud.  Bossuet  defined  a  heretic 
as  a  person  who  has  ideas  of  his  own.  Alex- 
ander adopted  that  very  advanced  view.  Al- 
ready, in  connection  with  the  course  of  the  stars, 
Paul  had  forbidden  the  use  of  the  word  revo- 
lution. Alexander  ukased  the  Copernican  sys- 
tem out  of  the  realm.  He  made  it  a  felony  to 
think.  Like  Paul,  he  was  mad.  The  army  was 
sane.  In  tramping  after  Napoleon  the  officers 
had  seen  strange  things — liberty,  which  they  did 
not  know  could  be;  freedom,  which  had  been 
unimagined. 

These  things  astounded.  Constitutional  gov- 
ernment amazed.  Amazement  is  the  beginning 
of  truth.  For  the  first  time,  perhaps,  officers  re- 
alised the  iniquity  of  a  despotism  that  made  pa- 
triotism treason,  the  folly  of  having  but  the  right 
to  obey,  the  nonsense  of  rescuing  Europe  from 
one  tyranny  while  Russia  endured  another. 
Such  views  disorganise. 

When  they  got  back,  their  easy  ways  and  care- 


The  Last  Despot  177 

less  talk  bewildered.  The  astounding  sans-gene 
was  incomprehensible.  As  understanding  came, 
the  regeneration  which  foreign  marvels  effect 
was  whispered,  talked  about,  talked  always  a 
bit  louder. 

Tsardom  had  never  known  a  revolution.  The 
hydra  waiting  for  it  then  was  to  be  killed.  Like 
Dmitri,  it  had  more  lives  than  one. 

In  the  barracks,  a  plot  was  hatched.  Alex- 
ander was  to  be  offered  honey  on  the  point  of 
a  sword — either  a  constitution  or  the  fate  of 
Paul.  He  could  take  his  choice.  In  sharpening 
the  sword  and  ladling  the*  honey,  the  plotters 
may  have  been  too  amateur  to  appreciate  that 
an  autocrat,  however  autocratic,  cannot  grant  a 
constitution.  An  autocrat  who  is  not  absolute 
is  a  contradiction  of  terms.  Nicholas  the  Last 
tried  it.  He  granted  a  constitution  which  was 
so  liberal  that  at  any  time  any  Russian  could 
be  shot.  Among  the  unconsidered  Russians  was 
himself.  With  him  tsardom  ceased  to  be. 
But  though  an  autocrat  must  be  absolute,  he 
can  die.  Alexander  pretended  to.  The  pomp 
and  pageantry  of  imperial  rites  were  given  to 
a  bogus  corpse.  Meanwhile,  hidden  in  a  mon- 
astery at  Tomsk,  where  neither  honey-ladlers 
or  history  could  follow,  he  cheated  amateurs  as 
he  had  swindled  experts. 


178  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Night  again  unfurled  her  great  black  fan. 

The  next  in  line  was  Constantine.  He  re- 
fused to  move  up.  He  said  he  lacked  the  talent. 
Certainly  he  did,  but  he  lacked, 'too,  the  courage. 
He  was  afraid  of  being  assassinated.  The  fear 
was  not  unreasonable.  At  a  review,  to  show  a 
foreign  prince  how  agreeable  it  is  to  be  a  Rus- 
sian grand-duke,  he  drew  his  sword,  marched  up 
to  a  general  and,  without  a  word,  ran  him 
through. 

Nicholas  was  next.  Like  Alexander,  he  was 
unlike  Paul.  But  there  was  nothing  cherubic 
in  his  appearance.  He  had  the  face  of  the  fallen, 
the  scowl  of  a  fiend,  a  despot's  sinister  de- 
meanour. History  used  to  regard  him  as  a 
great  man.  History  saw  but  the  facade.  His 
mind,  a  rendezvous  of  zeros,  functioned,  he  be- 
lieved, altitudinously  and  only.  He  had  other 
beliefs,  equally  inoffensive,  yet  principally  that 
he  was  the  direct  and  incarnated  emanation  of 
God,  the  source  from  which  everything  pro- 
ceeded and  to  which  all  returned.  He  believed 
himself  not  merely  autocrat  but  omnipotent. 
Anywhere  else,  except  where  he  happened  to 
be,  he  would  have  been  clapped  in  an  asylum. 

At  this  distance,  you  see  the  lunatic.  On  the 
day  he  became  tsar,  he  was  a  hero,  to  himself 
that  is,  yet  also  to  de  Custine,  a  looker-on  in 


The  Last  Despot  179 

Verona,  to  whom  he  related  the  incidents  of  the 
accession,  though  not  all  of  them,  and  a  few 
of  those  which  he  did  relate,  he  dreamed. 

The  streets  of  Petersburg  used  to  be  the  dreari- 
est and  the  emptiest  in  the  world.  In  winter 
the  cold  is  paralysing.  More  crippling  than 
cold  was  dread.  The  cold  came  from  the  pole. 
It  was  from  the  palace  that  fear's  icier  fingers 
stretched. 

On  that  day  the  Neva  was  frozen.  Flakes 
of  snow  were  falling,  little  petals  of  white  roses 
that  were  to  change  to  red.  But  momentarily 
the  sleet  of  fear  had  lifted.  In  addition  to 
roses  there  was  rebellion  in  the  air.  Before  the 
palace,  suddenly  the  great  square  filled.  The 
conspirators  that  had  been  eyeing  Alexander 
brought  their  bayonets  there.  Beyond,  in  the 
converging  streets,  was  that  rarity,  a  crowd.  Not 
one  of  the  crowd,  and  none  of  the  troopers  knew 
that  Constantine  had  refused  to  be  tsar.  In  such 
minds  as  they  had,  Nicholas  was  not  next  in 
line,  he  was  out  of  place.  Their  leaders  had 
told  them  that,  told  them  other  things  also, 
which,  without  understanding  much  of  it,  they 
believed. 

In  front  of  the  palace,  on  a  high  pedestal,  was 
a  bronze  chariot,  drawn  by  winged  horses  which 
an  enigmatic  figure,  perhaps  that  of  destiny,  led. 


180  The  Imperial  Orgy 

On  that  day  its  gilded  face  seemed  gay.  Per- 
haps it  was.  Perhaps,  with  eyes  that  saw  and 
foresaw,  it  was  considering,  not  the  pigmy  rebels 
massed  below,  but  a  giant  that  was  approaching. 

Hoarsely,  meanwhile,  the  prompted  pigmies 
shouted: — "Konstitusia!  Konstitusia!  Live  the 
Constitution!" 

From  a  window  opposite,  Nicholas  stared.  He 
did  not  understand.  How  could  he?  Coups 
d'etat  and  palace  revolutions  there  may  have 
been,  but  soldiers  and  civilians  mutinying  in  the 
open  streets,  that  was  impossible.  It  was  a  mo- 
ment before  his  dull  brain  could  grasp  it.  Dur- 
ing that  moment,  the  imperial  lupercalia  might 
have  ended  forever.  God  save  the  tsar!  About 
the  palace,  a  sapper  regiment  was  summoned 
and  aligned.  Then,  from  the  cavernous  porte 
cochere,  out  the  hero  rode.  Fancy  a  shepherd 
contemplating  bleating  sheep.  That  was  his 
attitude.  That  was  the  attitude  that  he  dreamed 
for  de  Custine's  pen. 

"On  your  knees!"  he  commanded. 

In  the  dream  he  was  obeyed.  What  followed 
was  not  dream,  it  was  in  the  order  of  things. 
Instantly  the  little  white  roses  changed  to  red. 
Mitrailleuses  were  mowing  criminals  whose 
crime  was  not  that  they  were  sheep  but  that  they 
were  parrots.    They  had  been  crying  for  a  con- 


The  Last  Despot  181 

stitution  and  at  the  same  time  and  very  sensibly 
they  had  been  nudging  and  asking: — "Who  is 
this  Konstitusia?     Is  she  Constantine's  wife?" 

Even  otherwise  what  business  was  it  of  theirs? 
Those  that  did  not  die  in  the  streets,  died  in 
the  Neva,  shoved  through  holes  cut  in  the  ice, 
though  some  were  beaten  to  death,  others  peo- 
pled Asia  and  a  few  were  hanged.  Among  the 
latter,  three  fell  from  the  gallows  and  broke  their 
legs.  They  were  hanged  again.  Afterward  they 
were  decently  buried.  On  their  graves,  in  lieu 
of  the  usual  cross,  Nicholas  put  little  gibbets. 
"Under  Tiberius  there  was  quiet,"  Tacitus,  with 
dramatic  brevity,  noted.    There  was  quiet  then. 

Thereafter  the  lupercalia  became  a  drama  at 
which  you  were  permitted  to  assist,  but  given 
any  disturbance  on  your  part,  any  remarks,  any 
criticism,  any  whispering,  anything  whatever  ex- 
cept applause,  and  out  you  went,  tossed  into  a 
sudden  grave,  or,  less  fortunately,  into  a  living 
one.  Russia  soon  discovered  that.  So  did  Po- 
land. 

Poland  still  lived,  still  prayed,  murmured 
occasionally;  occasionally,  too,  fevered  with 
hope,  she  bandaged  her  wounds  in  national  rags 
and  sang.  The  song  was  of  her  past.  In  earlier 
days,  Muscovy  had  been  her  vassal.  As  Russia 
rose,  Poland  fell.     Three  butchers  tripped  her. 


182  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Sharpening  their  knives,  Catherine,  the  Aus- 
trian ruler,  the  Prussian  king,  agreed  that  her 
body  and  blood  should  be  a  sacrament  of  com- 
munion. Mutilated,  dismembered,  but  not 
dead,  Poland  crawled  through  time  to  the  feet 
of  Nicholas.     He  stamped  on  her. 

In  the  atrocities  of  Caligula  there  was  a  rea- 
son. He  wanted  to  leave  a  name  that  history 
would  preserve.  In  the  atrocities  of  Nicholas 
there  was  also  a  reason.  From  history  he  wanted 
a  name  erased.  He  wanted  to  exterminate  a 
nation.  He  deigned  to  decree — the  term  is 
official — that  millions  should  change  their  lan- 
guage for  his,  abjure  their  religion  for  him.  He 
deigned  further  to  provide  a  ritual  of  the  wor- 
ship due  to  himself.  At  any  objection,  the  knout, 
exile,  the  gallows.  Poles  were  driven  in  hordes 
to  Tartary,  or,  more  expeditiously,  to  death.  Ten 
thousand  children  were  taken  from  their  parents, 
engulfed  in  Russia,  lost  there.  Rather  than  have 
them  go,  other  children  were  killed  by  their 
parents.  Like  Caligula,  Herod  also  left  a  name. 
That  of  Nicholas  exceeds  it. 

The  crime  of  the  revolutionists  was  that  they 
had  tried  to  think.  Poland's  crime  was  that  she 
had  succeeded.  Nicholas  was  determined  that 
there  should  be  no  thought  ir  Russia  save  such 


The  Last  Despot  183 

as  issued  from  the  zeros  in  his  head.  Any  other 
variety  he  regarded  as  atheism. 

To  prevent  the  entrance  of  foes,  Ivan  ringed 
the  realm  with  forts.  To  prevent  the  entrance 
of  light,  Nicholas  quarantined  it.  Within,  Ivan 
made  a  cemetery;  Nicholas,  a  camp.  Immense 
improvement.  Petersburg  became  a  parade- 
ground  of  soldiery  constantly  defiling,  a  bivouac 
in  which  everything  was  exacted,  nothing  per- 
mitted and  before  which,  gun  in  hand,  Nicholas 
paced  like  a  sentry,  guarding  the  past,  challeng- 
ing enlightenment,  bidding  progress  begone, 
calling  at  the  world: — "Qui  vive?" 

A  German  from  head  to  foot,  without  a  drop 
of  Russian  blood,  he  had  married  a  Prussian, 
Charlotte  of  Hohenzollern,  who  acquired  a  mor- 
ibund air,  the  result  of  being  a  mother  too  often. 

"S'epuiser  en  grand-dues,  quelle  destined" 
said  de  Custine  after  scrutinising  her  at  a  court 
ball,  which  he  described  as  not  splendour  mere- 
ly, but  poetry. 

The  high  walls  were  mirrors  banked  with 
flowers,  framed  with  gold,  heightened  with 
lustres,  and  their  effect,  which  was  that  of  dia- 
mond curtains  in  a  shadowless  fairyland,  turned 
the  vast  hall  into  a  spaciousness  where  there  was 
but  light  and   illusion   and   where   the  dancers 


184  The  Imperial  Orgy 

multiplied  themselves  indefinitely.  It  was  magi- 
cal, de  Custine  added. 

Magic  is  not  gaiety.  No  one  laughed,  no  one 
talked,  people  conversed  about  nothing  in  whis- 
pers. There  was  constraint  there,  there  was 
fear,  that  fear  that  brooded  over  Russia  and 
which  lurked  in  the  palace  of  the  Caesars.  In 
the  assembly,  were  kingdomless  kings,  queens 
discrowned,  slave  sovereigns — revivals  of  the 
pomps  of  Rome — and  a  heat  that  was  Senegam- 
bian. 

Polar  zephyrs  annoyed  the  presiding  Teutons. 
The  independence  of  nature  shocked  them. 
De  Custine  said  that  the  surest  way  to  please 
Nicholas  was  to  treat  Petersburg  as  though  it 
were  Nice  and  to  go  about  without  furs  in  win- 
ter. Flatter  the  climate  and  you  flattered  the 
tsar,  whose  intelligence  even  Victoria  regarded 
as  limited. 

It  would  have  been  pleasant  to  have  seen  those 
two  at  Windsor.  It  would  have  been  pleasanter 
yet  to  have  seen  him  afterward,  when  she  sent 
him  the  ultimatum  which  was  the  fanfare  to  the 
Crimean  war.  The  ultimatum  was  delivered 
to  Nesselrode,  who  was  his  foreign  minister. 
Nesselrode — to-day  a  pudding — said  that  his 
august  lord  would  not  deign  to  notice  it,  which 
was  tantamount  to  telling  her  to  go  to  hell.     It 


The  Last  Despot  185 

was  she  who  sent  him  there,  more  exactly,  it  was 
Russia's  subsequent  allies,  England  and  France. 

A  very  ignorant,  a  very  brutal  and — at  this 
distance — a  very  amusing  person,  Nicholas  none 
the  less  was  a  real  figure,  not  a  lay  one,  an  iron 
man,  liberty's  exterminating  angel,  a  being  who 
annihilated  the  goddess  whenever  she  appeared. 
In  that  was  his  glory,  such  as  it  is,  and,  such  as 
it  was,  for  thirty  years  he  sustained  it  over  Rus- 
sia awed  and  Europe  coerced.  For  thirty 
years,  Ivan  to  his  people,  he  was  Agamemnon 
among  kings. 

Europe,  though  coerced,  could  think.  It  oc- 
curred to  her  that  the  iron  man  might  be  a  scare- 
crow. With  Russia  it  was  different.  Submis- 
sive she  lay  at  the  feet  of  her  paradomaniac, 
who  knew  but  one  joy,  the  sight  of  troops  con- 
stantly parading,  and  but  one  consolation,  the 
conviction  that  he  was  the  great  I  Am.  The  con- 
viction was  an  illusion  which  Europe  presently 
proceeded  to  ablate.  The  shock  of  the  loss  of 
it  killed  him.  The  story  of  it  all  is  called  the 
Crimean  War. 

That  inglorious  scramble  into  which  England 
entered  with  the  stern  spirit  of  a  policeman  and 
France  with  the  vendetta  views  of  a  bandit,  be- 
gan over  a  question  of  therapeutics.  Nicholas 
declared  that  the  Sultan  was  a  Sick  Man.     The 


186  The  Imperial  Orgy 

diagnosis  was  his  own.  By  way  of  regimen,  he 
proposed  to  break  into  the  patient's  room,  first 
finish,  then  rob  him.  But  though  the  diagnosis 
was  novel,  the  second-storey  treatment  was  not. 

Constantinople,  the  old  imperial  city,  Tsar- 
grad  as  Muscovy  called  her,  had  been  the  secular 
goal  of  Slav  ambition.  Sophia  Palaelogus, 
Ivan's  grandmother,  was  a  descendant  of  the 
final  Byzantine  emperor.  Later  tsars  regarded 
themselves  as  that  Caesar's  heir.  Russia's  his- 
toric pretensions  to  Stamboul  had  no  other  or- 
igin. In  the  initial  stages  of  the  subsequent 
world  war,  it  was  therefore  highly  diplomatic 
of  England  to  think  of  offering  it  to  her,  parti- 
cularly as  she  thereby  succeeded — and  to  Ger- 
many's glee — in  alienating  both  Bulgaria  and 
Greece.  The  Coburg  adventurer  expected  to 
sit  there.  So  also  did  Constantine  and  his  Hun 
Klytemnestra. 

But,  at  this  time,  England  could  not  counten- 
ance the  Slav  ambition.  The  Dardanelles  Rus- 
sian, the  Mediterranean  would  be  a  Muscovite 
lake  and  Turkey  a  carpet  to  the  Indus.  Eng- 
land could  not  permit  that,  nor  France  either. 

France,  formerly  the  most  militant  of  nations, 
yet  then  very  bourgeois,  had  her  hand  forced. 
The  bait  of  revenge  was  dangled  at  her.  The 
dangling  was  done  by  Louis  Napoleon,  who  al- 


The  Last  Despot  187 

ready  had  deceived  everybody  twice — first  in 
pretending  that  he  was  a  fool;  afterward,  in  pre- 
tending he  wasn't.  Revenge  was  not  his  object. 
He  wanted  to  get  into  society  and  take  his  wife 
there.  More  exactly,  it  was  the  lady  who 
wanted  him  to  do  both.  So  much  for  Helen. 
Now  for  Agamemnon. 

Asiatically,  with  Tatar  contempt,  the  Ger- 
man bastard  eyed  the  Frenchman  and  asked  if 
he  remembered  what  Russia  had  done  to  the 
other  fellow.  Then  the  allies  went  at  him. 
Sevastopol  was  their  objective.  Their  object 
was  less  certain.  The  troops  did  not  know 
whether  they  were  for  or  against  the  Sick  Man, 
who  was  quite  as  real  to  them  as  the  Pierrot  in 
the  moon.  The  high  command,  better  informed 
perhaps,  was  not  for  that  reason  overburdened 
with  intelligence.  They  thought  the  serfs 
would  rise  and  Sevastopol  topple. 

Official  Russia  had  an  equivalent  understand- 
ing of  the  allies.  "We  have  only  to  shy  our  hats 
at  the  imbeciles,"  she  carelessly  remarked.  Half 
a  century  later,  her  opinion  of  the  Japanese  was 
as  cheerful.  "Monkeys  with  the  brains  of  par- 
rots," they  were  grand-ducally  described.  But 
though  she  was  not  happy  in  her  views  of  the 
coalition,   she  was  happier  with   it  than  with 


l88  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Nippon.  The  sum  total  of  the  allied  achieve- 
ments was  the  reduction  of  a  single  citadel. 

That  citadel,  Sevastopol,  the  arsenal  of  the 
empire,  held,  behind  a  veil  of  forts,  a  fleet  that 
was  to  make  the  Sick  Man  sicker.  Once  the 
arsenal  taken  and  the  fleet  destroyed,  the  patient 
was  safe.  So  argued  the  allies.  Into  the 
Euxine  they  sailed,  on  the  sacred  Chersonese 
they  landed.  From  heights  above  the  Alma,  a 
river  to  the  north  of  Sevastopol,  the  Russians 
blazed  at  them.  The  allies  crossed  the  river, 
climbed  the  heights,  said,  "How  are  you?"  and 
let  them  run,  which  they  did,  to  Sevastopol,  be- 
wildered by  such  civility.  To  show  perhaps 
that  they  had  not  come  for  mere  amenities,  the 
allies  went  around  to  Balaklava,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  arsenal,  tried  to  pound  it  from  there, 
pounded  it,  or  tried  to  pound  it,  from  the  sea, 
failing  in  each  effort,  finding  that  instead  of  a 
naval  excursion,  they  were  confronted  by  an 
army  then  eager  to  get  at  them. 

That  army,  at  which  the  Light  Brigade  made 
a  dash  so  magnificent  that  Bosquet  exclaimed, 
"Ce  n'est  pas  la  guerre!"  and  Tennyson,  very 
originally  and  unobviously  added,  "Some  one 
had  blundered,"  that  army  drew  the  allies  at 
Inkerman  into  a  sublimated  Donnybrook  Fair, 
a  rough  and  tumble,  in  the  dark,  in  the  rain,  in 


The  Last  Despot  i8g 

which  it  was  beaten  but  only  because  the  allies 
were  the  bigger  gluttons.  Of  generalship  there 
was  none.  English  tactics  were  simple.  It  was 
"Up  boys  and  at  'em."  French  strategy  was 
not  more  complicated,  nor  was  the  Russian  finer. 
But  the  accounts  make  very  agreeable  reading, 
so  agreeable  that,  in  considering  them  now,  any- 
one who  did  not  know  better  might  mistake  the 
Russians  for  titans  and  the  allies  for  gods. 

Ultimately,  the  gods  muddled  through,  but 
not  until  they  had  out-manceuvred  the  titans' 
chief  of  staff,  General  February,  General  Chol- 
era and  the  usual  traitor  in  the  allies  camp,  Gen- 
eral Stupidity.  These  interfered.  So  did  an- 
other strategist,  the  Weather.  Allied  ships, 
bearing  supplies,  were  overtaken  and  sunk  by 
storms  marshalled  by  General  February.  Gen- 
eral Stupidity  saw  to  it  that  provisions  that 
eluded  the  gales  either  rotted  obscurely  or  else 
landed  safely  in  Russian  mouths.  General 
Stupidity,  reinforced  by  General  Cholera,  ar- 
ranged that  the  sick  had  no  succour,  the  maimed 
no  aid.  Yet,  presently,  there  were  correspond- 
ents to  tell  of  these  things — inkbeasts  as  Bis- 
marck subsequently  called  them.  Presently, 
also,  there  were  angels  to  relieve — English 
women  from  whose  work  the  Red  Cross  re- 
sulted. 


190  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Meanwhile  the  siege  progressed  and  very  cur- 
iously. It  was  a  siege  that  involuted,  doubled 
on  itself,  presenting  an  oddity,  the  spectacle  of 
beleaguers  as  beset  as  the  beleagued,  of  forces 
contending  with  other  foes  than  each  other,  of 
incompetence  pitted  against  corruption.  Fin- 
ally, after  routs  and  heroics,  ramparts  were 
scaled,  redoubts  were  taken,  Sevastopol  fell.  It 
fell  as  Moscow  fell.  Like  Moscow  it  was 
burned.  Its  sables  were  shrivelled,  its  fortresses 
dumb,  the  wings  of  the  eagles  were  clipped. 

For  the  time  being  that  is.  Twenty  years 
later  Russia  was  again  at  the  Sick  Man.  She 
was  at  his  door.  But  for  the  police  she  would 
have  had  him.  As  it  was  she  got  away  with  a 
lot  of  his  goods.  Said  Salisbury  admiringly: 
"We  put  our  money  on  the  wrong  horse." 

At  this  time  matters  were  very  different.  At 
the  crash  of  the  fall  of  the  arsenal,  Russia  awoke. 
Humiliated  by  the  presence  of  hostile  legions  on 
her  sacred  peninsula,  dismayed  in  the  Crimea 
as  she  was  to  be  in  the  East,  startled  by  the  totter 
of  bastions  which  official  corruption  had  under- 
mined, aghast  at  the  cries  of  soldiers  to  whom 
that  corruption  had  been  the  bitterest  foe,  bereft 
of  her  belief  in  imperial  might,  Russia  rose  from 
her  secular  slumber  and  arraigned  autocracy  at 
the  bar  of  God. 


The  Last  Despot  191 

Nicholas,  the  iron  man,  sank  back.  A  car- 
toonist pictured  General  February  also  turning 
traitor  and  poking  a  frigid  ringer  at  the  emper- 
or's heart.  Nicholas  had  no  heart.  What  he 
did  have  was  a  thoroughly  mistaken  idea  of  his 
own  importance.    That  gone,  fright  replaced  it. 

Fright  plucked  at  his  sleeve,  shoved  him  to 
bed,  then  to  his  grave,  nodded  good-riddance, 
turned  to  his  heirs  and  destroyed  them.  Over, 
beneath,  around  and  about  them,  it  set  a  tyranny 
more  tyrannic  than  their  own. 

Tsars,  hitherto,  had  the  freedom  that  waves 
possess.  Thereafter,  behind  their  own  high 
throne,  a  higher  one  stood.  In  it  sat  the  giant 
whom  the  gilded  eyes  of  destiny  perhaps  fore- 
saw on  that  day  when  the  white  roses  changed 
to  red  and  Nicholas  hushed  the  parrots.  The 
giant  was  King  Terror. 

Perhaps  Nicholas  also  foresaw  him.  He  had 
no  imagination,  but  life  is  a  book  that  man  reads 
when  he  dies.  In  its  pages  that  vanish  as  you 
touch  them,  myopia  may  become  clairvoyance 
and  obtuseness  understanding.  It  may  be  that 
from  before  the  flickering  eyes  of  the  dying 
tyrant  a  veil  was  lifted.  It  may  be  that  he  saw 
red  hosts  trampling  tsardom  into  the  things  that 
were,  tossing  the  last  of  the  breed  to  the  bats  of 
a  Siberian  Avcrnus.     It  is  said  that  he  did  not 


192  The  Imperial  Orgy 

die  of  pneumonia,  as  was  officially  announced, 
but  of  a  drug  of  his  choosing.  Like  books, 
drugs,  too,  have  their  sorceries  and  his  may  have 
shown  him  that  the  fate  of  autocracy  is  the  hell 
from  which  it  came.  But  probably  it  did  noth- 
ing of  the  kind.  Probably  he  remained  to  the 
end,  heavy-witted,  unenlightened.  Yet  if  it  be 
true  that  the  dead  turn  in  the  grave  at  what  they 
see,  long  since  he  must  have  been  in  perpetual 
motion. 


IX 

KING   TERROR 

ROME  had  other  gods  than  the  Caesars, 
herds  of  them,  so  many  that  they  out- 
numbered the  population.  Except  a 
few  little  gods  and  one  very  great  divinity,  they 
were  all  foreigners.  Most  of  them  were  known 
to  everybody.  But  not  the  great  god.  His 
name,  a  secret,  only  the  hierophants  knew.  A 
senator  was  put  to  death  for  having  uttered  it. 
Engendered  perhaps  by  Pan  who  engendered 
Panic,  the  great  god  was  Pavor — Terror.  With 
him,  Rome  conquered  the  world.  Then  he 
turned  and  tore  her. 

The  history  of  Russia  is  an  expurgated  edition 
of  that  of  Rome.  There  are  blanks  in  it.  One 
blank  is  nine  hundred  years  long.  The  rest  is 
the  chronicle  of  an  orgy  at  which  autocrats 
feasted  longly.  After  Sevastopol,  history  turn- 
ed, reversing  the  orgy,  putting  the  table  on  top 
and  despots  beneath,  revealing  to  their  cowering 
eyes  one  greater  than  they,  the  old  god  who  then 

193 


194  The  Imperial  Orgy 

was  king.  He,  too,  could  feast  and  from  their 
cups  of  mud  and  blood  he  tore  them. 

The  first  Nicholas  escaped  him  only  by  dying. 
Yet  such  was  the  shock  of  the  sight  of  his  face, 
that  that  hangman,  who  was  Liberty's  execu- 
tioner, gibbered,  "Emancipation!" 

Here  enters  his  son,  Alexander  II.  History 
shows  how  the  great  monarch  dogged  him;  how 
he  shadowed  his  successor;  how  he  annihilated 
the  last  of  the  lot;  how  disinterring  the  forgot- 
ten, he  instituted  a  despotism  more  destructive 
than  theirs  and  became  an  evocation  of  Gen- 
ghiz.  Attila  wanted  to  destroy  civilisation. 
Genghiz  wanted  to  destroy  humanity.  Terror 
can  be  quite  as  gentle. 

There  is  an  odd  tale  of  a  wizard  who  kept  in 
a  bottle  an  imp  that  he  worshipped.  One  day 
the  imp  got  out  and  slew  him.  Terror  resem- 
bles that  imp.  Terror  used  to  be  a  fetish  of  the 
tsars.  The  day  came  when  the  fetish  was  heads- 
man. In  history  as  it  is  written,  the  second 
Alexander  was  killed  by  a  bomb.  That  is  a 
superficial  view.  An  autocrat  was  killed  by  his 
ikon. 

A  tall  German,  with  a  heavy  jowl,  a  receding 
forehead,  a  cavalry  moustache  and  mutton-chop 
whiskers,  Alexander  II.  was  the  portrait,  in 
blood,  of  Nietzsche's  blonde  beast.    Like  Nietz- 


King  Terror  195 

sche,  he  had  frequented  the  antique  sages. 
When  anything  annoying  confronted  them,  they 
confronted  it,  waved  it  away,  denied  its  exist- 
ence. Excellent  tactics.  Alexander  employed 
them  on  Poland.  Drugged  with  the  poppies  of 
her  eternal  hopes,  Poland  rose  up  before  him. 
With  a  stare,  he  blighted  her. 

After  Poland,  nihilism.  In  between — and 
the  margin  has  the  width  of  years — stood  the 
Porte.  The  tsar  stared  at  the  sultan  who  stared 
back.  Abdul  the  Damned  was  quite  as  vulper- 
ine  as  any  other  autocrat  and  considerably  more 
astute.  "Time  and  I  against  all  comers,"  was 
the  motto  that  hung  in  the  Yildiz  Kiosk.  He 
was  ill  though,  sick  with  the  same  malady  that 
Dr.  Nicholas  had  diagnosed.  Yet,  invalid 
though  he  were,  he  liked  to  bundle  Christians 
off  the  earth.  It  distracted  ,him.  Gladstone 
could  not  stand  that  nor,  to  Gladstone's  disgust, 
could  Alexander. 

Alexander  cared  nothing  about  Abdul's 
amusements.  Former  tsars  had  dispatched  too 
many  Christians  for  additional  dispatches  to  vex 
him.  But  the  tsaral  heritage,  the  antique  Greek 
throne,  the  immemorial  desire  to  slake  an  im- 
perial thirst  in  the  waters  of  the  Golden  Horn, 
that  was  another  aria,  highly  melodious,  yet  held 
profane   in   the   European   Sunday-school   con- 


196  The  Imperial  Orgy 

cert.  The  familiar  and  altruistic  hymn  con- 
cerning the  purification  of  St.  Sophia  was  much 
more  decorous  and  entoning  it  he  marched  Sko- 
beleff  against  Abdul,  who  countermarched, 
nearly  marched  over  him  and  then  marched 
back,  farther,  farther  still,  from  the  Shipka  Pass 
and  Plevna  to  San  Stephano  and  the  slim  gilt 
gates  of  Stamboul. 

Skobeleff  had  him.  Byzantium,  the  imperial 
houri,  Roman  in  body  but  Greek  in  soul,  whose 
fair  beauty  even  the  ferocious  apostolicism  of 
the  Turks  could  not  wholly  mar,  was  in  his 
grasp.  At  that  moment  British  ironclads  en- 
tered the  Dardanelles.  Skobeleff  snapped  his 
fingers.  Alexander  commanded  him  to  glove 
them  and  salute.  Skobeleff's  anger  was  Hom- 
eric. It  shook  the  legions.  They  adored  him. 
With  them  he  would  have  taken  Alexander  and 
hanged  him.  The  Caesars  had  their  brews.  So 
had  the  tsars.  Skobeleff,  hero  of  Plevna,  a  na- 
tional idol,  was  poisoned.  History  can  only 
record  it.  History  is  an  endless  book.  Nihil- 
ism was  writing  a  page  in  it  then. 

Nihilism,  mother  of  bolshevism,  came,  as  her 
daughter  came,  from  Germany.  A  simple 
creed,  it  held  that  the  happiness  of  mankind 
requires  the  abolition  of  everything.  Assuming 
that  to  be  true,  happiness  remains  to  be  defined, 


King  Terror  197 

which  it  never  has  been,  except  by  Voltaire,  who 
called  it  a  myth  invented  by  Satan  for  man's 
despair.  Utopia  is  perhaps  as  mythical  and  gen- 
eral happiness  a  chimera.  General  content- 
ment seems  less  illusory.  Its  main  factor,  per- 
haps, is  non-interference  and  that  may  come 
when  man  shall  have  learned  that  nothing  is 
important. 

Nihilism  is  a  term  that  a  saint  invented.  In 
the  De  civitate  Dei,  Augustin  said: — "Nihilisti 
appelantur  quia  nihil  credunt  et  nihil  docent." 
Nihilists  believe  in  nothing  and  teach  it. 

Russian  nihilism  first  took  shape  after  the 
Crimea.  After  San  Stephano,  it  took  substance. 
Weening,  trundling,  training  it,  was  old  King 
Terror. 

Nihilism,  originally  a  theory,  afterward  a 
doctrine,  became  a  force.  The  theory  interested, 
the  doctrine  impressed.  The  force  developed 
a  generation  new  to  Russia,  a  generation  that 
thought.  To  think  was  always  forbidden  and 
very  unnecessarily.  No  one  dreamed  of  such 
a  thing.  Besides,  it  was  a  depraved  occupation. 
It  induced  disease.  It  induced  it  then.  It 
caused  a  form  of  neurosis  of  which  poverty  of 
the  blood  and  empty  pockets  were  contributory. 
The  new  generation  lacked  food.     In  the  open, 


198  The  Imperial  Orgy 

before  the  palace,  it  cried  for  reform.  Alex- 
ander stared.    The  cries  redoubled. 

Alexander  deigned  to  admonish.  Solemnly, 
he  stated  that  reforms  come  not  from  below  but 
from  above. 

He  might  have  added  that  revolutions  dis- 
play the  same  phenomena.  He  might  have  ex- 
plained that  the  Convention  was  the  work  not 
of  plebeians  but  of  philosophers.  He  might 
have  shown  that  in  France,  after  everything  had' 
been  demolished,  everything  was  rebuilt.  He 
might  have  demonstrated  that  in  the  upheaval 
only  names  were  changed,  that  instead  of  a  king 
by  right  divine,  there  was  a  dictator  by  might 
infernal. 

These  platitudes  he  could  have  adorned  with 
anecdote.  But,  son  of  an  iron  man  and  father 
of  another  in  an  iron  mask,  he  was  not  other- 
wise ironic.  He  lacked  the  wit  to  deduce  the 
paradox  that  Russia  could  be  worse  off  than 
she  was  and  the  humour  to  declare  that  he  would 
facilitate  it.  In  circumstances  such  as  con- 
fronted him,  it  was  the  fashion  of  his  house  to 
turn  everybody  into  mincemeat.  Instead  of 
decimating,  he  vacillated;  instead  of  jesting,  he 
promised.  To  his  subsequent  regret  that  prom- 
ise he  kept.  Freedom  was  tossed  to  the  people 
like   a  bone  to  a   dog.     Forty  million  human 


King  Terror  199 

chattels  had  an  in  perpetuum  mortgage  on  them 
lifted. 

Former  tsars  gave  them  away  by  the  thousand 
and  as  readily  as  a  snuff-box.  They  were  won 
and  lost  at  cards,  auctioned  with  furniture  and 
cows,  sold  with  lands  designated  as  "inhabited 
estates."  Actually  chattels,  descriptively  serfs, 
technically  they  were  souls — when  male.  A 
woman  had  no  soul.  With  Alexander's  permis- 
sion she  acquired  one.  It  was  very  considerate 
of  him.  But  to  the  owners,  robbed  of  their 
goods,  the  whole  thing  was  a  despotic  caprice. 
To  the  manumitted  it  was  confusing.  The  bone 
they  got  was  bare  as  your  hand.  Was  it  even  a 
bone?  They  had  their  doubts.  To  their  lords 
they  had  been  accustomed  to  say: — "We  are 
yours,  but  the  land  is  ours!" 

Abruptly,  through  some  legerdemain,  they 
ceased  to  be  anybody's,  the  land  ceased  to  be 
theirs,  apparently  free  to  come  and  go,  they  had 
nowhere  to  go  to.  The  earth  had  opened.  All 
that  remained  was  their  hovels,  where  they 
could  continue  to  starve — on  paying  for  the  priv- 
ilege. If  that  was  liberty,  they  preferred  slav- 
ery. More  exactly,  they  preferred  to  believe 
that  somewhere,  very  far  no  doubt,  but  some- 
where, the  little  father  on  a  high  throne  sat  wait- 
ing and  willing  to  give  them  such  land  as  they 


200  The  Imperial  Orgy 

needed.     Otherwise,  what  did  this  word  emanci- 
pation mean? 

Nihilism    explained.     Emancipation    meant 
that  for  land  to  be  free  it  must  first  be  manured 
with  the  blood  of  mythical  Romanovs.     There 
are  explanations  that  do  not  explain.     There  are 
also  natures  that  are  not  receptive.     To  the  peo- 
ple,   the    Romanovs,    however   mythical,    were 
sacrosanct,  quasi  if  not  wholly  divine.     The  idea 
is  absurd,  but  the  absurder  an  idea  the  more  fan- 
atics it  can  claim.     The  certainties  of  mathe- 
matics are  not  exciting,  but  for  chimeras  nations 
have  fought  and  died.     What  is  more  remark- 
able, they  have  drudged.     Russia  had  drudged 
too  long  for  the  tsars  to  turn  on  Alexander.  Even 
otherwise  the  manumitted  were  dull.     Ages  of 
despotism  had  not  soured  their  minds.     They 
had  none.    They  had  only  a  few  wants  reduced 
to  a  minimum,  a  few  instincts  knavish  and  primi- 
tive.   They  liked  to  get  drunk.    They  liked  to 
rob.     But  for  the  knout  they  had  a  pathetic  re- 
spect; they  had  an  inherited  hatred  of  novelty, 
and  an  ingrained  awe  of  the  tsar.    To  such  as 
they,  the  explanations  of  nihilism  were  as  wind 
on  the  steppes.     Ideas  could  not  be  planted  on 
wastes  that  so  long  had  been  bare.     What  ty- 
ranny had  not  stirred,  theory  could  not  affect. 
Nihilism,    outfaced    by    stolidity,    wheeled. 


King  Terror  201 

From  the  peasant,  it  turned  to  the  palace.  Islam 
had  converted  with  the  sword,  the  Inquisition 
with  the  stake,  the  Convention  with  the  guillo- 
tine. Demonstrations  being  futile,  nihilism 
took  to  dynamite.  Murder  clubs  mushroomed 
in  Petersburg.  Autocracy  became  a  despotism 
tempered  by  bombs. 

Between  the  foregoing  sentences  there  are 
years.  There  are  concessions,  too — of  the  kind 
that  put  Louis  XVI.  in  the  tumbril.  Like  that 
imbecile,  Alexander  II.  had  inherited  a  situation 
which  he  had  not  created.  He  differed  from 
him  in  every  other  respect.  America  called  him 
Lincolnoffski.  Europe  was  salaaming  to  him 
for  his  treatment  of  the  Turk.  He  had  a  gov- 
ernment of  iron,  a  people  absolutely  subservient. 
In  between  was  but*a  thin  red  line. 

To  efface  that  line  Alexander  did  his  best,  and 
also  his  worst.  He  used  all  means  to  conciliate; 
those  failing,  all  means  to  suppress.  Nihilism 
already  outfaced  by  stupidty,  indifference  might 
have  squelched.  Indifference  is  highly  coer- 
cive. But  though  Alexander  had  frequented 
the  antique  sages,  he  had  also  loitered  over  the 
annals  of  his  house.  When  philosophy  deserted 
him,  ferocity  stepped  in.  Moreover,  the  cour- 
age which  previously  he  had  lacked,  Plevna 
supplied.     Young  men  who  had  just  left  the  uni- 


202  The  Imperial  Orgy 

versities  were  given  post-graduate  courses  in 
Siberia.  Young  women,  less  advanced  per- 
haps, were  taught  that  of  all  brutes,  pliocene, 
miocene,  lampsacene,  the  most  ignoble  is  man. 
These  lessons,  instead  of  correcting,  corroded. 
After  each  deportation  to  Siberia,  when  it  did 
not  happen  to  be  Shame,  the  places  of  the  exiles 
were  filled,  and  so  fully  that  you  would  have 
thought  that  terrorists  covered  the  land.  Gen- 
erated spontaneously,  multiplying  with  the  rap- 
idity of  insects,  swarming  everywhere,  they  pre- 
sented a  curious  spectacle,  the  infinitely  little 
contending  with  the  infinitely  great. 

To  Petersburg,  then,  came  larger  prisons.  To 
the  mines  were  longer  lanes.  In  the  mines  was 
the  dry  guillotine;  in  the  prisons  there  was  tor- 
ture, the  rack  re-established,  applied  for  nothing, 
for  a  look,  for  a  word,  for  holding  a  pamphlet, 
for  throwing  it  way.  Very  properly,  too,  and 
with  the  finest  sense  of  law  and  order.  Defend- 
ants were  tried  in  public.  What  more  could 
they  ask?  It  is  true  they  were  always  convicted. 
But  what  did  they  mean  by  looking,  by  talking, 
by  having  or  not  having  things  in  their  hands? 
To  teach  them  better,  torture  followed.  The 
torture  was  private.  To  make  it  more  private 
the  condemned  were  never  seen  again.     If  they 


King  Terror  203 

had  been,  perhaps  only  their  mothers  could  have 
recognised  them. 

Then,  face  to  face,  were  two  terrors ;  the  white 
terror  radiated  by  the  tsar;  the  black  terror  rad- 
iated at  him. 

One  does  not  choose  between  tears,  or  per- 
haps between  terrors.  Yet  of  those  two  terrors, 
the  more  terrifying  was  the  black.  The  white 
terror  terrified  the  little.  The  great,  being 
large,  are  more  receptive.  The  mighty  were 
terrified  most. 

Black  terror  is  nihilism  in  its  acute  form. 
Usually  maniacal,  sometimes  in  its  delirium  it 
has  expressed  that  which  was  "inarticulate  in  a 
nation.  Always  hideous,  sometimes  it  is  sub- 
lime. In  France,  it  had  been  grandiose.  But 
Russia  lacked  a  Mirabeau;  the  terrorists,  a  Dan- 
ton;  the  people,  a  Voltaire,  who,  even  if  they 
had  had  him,  they  could  not  have  read.  They 
were  otherwise  blessed.  With  them,  to  a  man, 
was  the  imperial  clan. 

The  latter,  violently  opposed  to  Alexander's 
concessions,  saw  in  reform  a  diminution  of  them- 
selves. Peter  would  have  devoured  the  lot. 
Alexander  lacked  the  stomach.  By  policy  a 
philanthropist,  though  by  instinct  a  thug,  physi- 
cally scrofulous  and  mentally  unsound,  congen- 
ially   aphasiac    and    consequently    incoherent, 


204  The  Imperial  Orgy 

freeing  Russia  and  regretting  the  act,  history, 
with  her  gallery  taste  for  shams,  saw  what  she 
could  mistake  for  the  righteous  liberator  and 
applauds  him  still.  No  one  need  begrudge  him 
that.  For  the  first  time  since  tsars  were  in- 
vented, the  orgy  palled.  In  what  otherwise 
would  have  been  his  normal  enjoyments,  terror- 
ism interfered,  absolutism  as  well. 

Whether  the  two  combined  in  uncertain.  In 
the  tenebrous  chronicles  of  the  great  carnivora 
there  is  always  much  that  is  obscure.  But  in  his 
court,  which  of  all  courts  was  the  most  regal, 
he  became  afraid  to  stir.  One  evening,  it  was 
fortunate  for  him  that  he  omitted  to. 

Long  before  he  had  married  a  Hessian.  On 
that  evening  she  was  ill.  Another  lady  pre- 
sided. This  other,  the  Favorita,  was  the  Prin- 
cess Dolgorouki,  whom  presently,  when  the  Hes- 
sian was  dead,  he  married  and  who,  at  the  time, 
had  a  court  of  her  own. 

Without,  in  the  hollow  square  that  fronted  the 
palace,  cavalry  was  stationed.  Within,  on  a 
wide  stair,  ran  a  hedge  of  rose-tunicked  Cos- 
sacks, a  line  of  Circassians  in  silver  and  pale 
blue.  Beyond  that  rainbow,  in  a  red-gold  hall, 
which  a  thousand  candles  lit,  was  this  man,  his 
mistress  and  their  court.  Where  the  cavalry 
were  was  ice,  a  wind  that  had  knives.     Within, 


King  Terror  205 

in  the  glowing  hall,  was  the  atmosphere  of  a 
seraglio  perfumed  with  turpentine  and  Russia 
leather — an  odour  which  this  palace  always  ex- 
haled. From  above,  in  a  gallery,  fell  a  tinkle 
of  balalaikas,  accompanying  the  conversation 
which  must  have  been  dull.  Adjacently,  or 
more  exactly,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away, 
was  another  hall,  equally  pleasant,  where  these 
people  were  to  dine. 

Like  the  conversation,  the  minutes  dragged. 
The  tsar,  the  princess,  the  court,  were  waiting 
for  a  German,  a  boor,  one  of  the  Hesse  tribe, 
who  was  guest  that  night.  Finally,  a  breath,  a 
rumour,  an  announcement.  The  royal  brute 
strode  in.  The  usual  brilliancies.  The  forma- 
tion of  the  usual  procession,  which,  just  as  it 
started,  shook. 

Lights  flared,  the  hall  oscillated,  mirrors  fell. 
Into  the  scented  atmosphere  came  another 
odour,  a  trifle  acrid,  the  smell  of  smoke  which  a 
concussion  had  preceded.  From  a  guard-room, 
directly  beneath  the  dining-hall,  terrorists  had 
blown  up  the  table,  blown  off  the  ceiling,  killed 
the  guard  below,  the  pages  above,  sixty  in  all. 
An  unpunctual  Hun  had  saved  the  tsar  that 
night. 

The  night  was  in  February,  1880.  A  year 
passed  during  which  other  attempts  were  made, 


2o6  The  Imperial  Orgy 

but  not  without  the  police  knowing  beforehand 
that  they  would  be.  In  the  subsequent  reign, 
the  third  Alexander  saw  an  officer  of  his  house- 
hold approaching  and,  not  recognising  him,  shot 
him  dead.  The  second  Alexander  also  saw  a 
man  approaching  and  also  fired.  It  was  at  him- 
self that  he  shot,  at  his  figure  reflected  from  a 
mirror.     Enviable  existence. 

Presently  it  was  learned  that  he  was  to  inspect 
the  troops.  As  he  might  go  one  way  and  return 
another,  or  vice  versa,  at  both  ways  two  men, 
each  with  a  bomb,  were  stationed.  Afterward 
it  was  said  that  the  explosive  employed  looked 
and  smelt  like  honey.  If  that  be  true,  a  new  and 
fragrant  death  was  hurled  at  him  in  two  bombs, 
both  of  which,  wrapped  in  cotton,  looked  like 
snowballs.  The  second  bomb  killed  the  terror- 
ist and  the  tsar.  What  remained  of  Alexander 
II.  was  removed  on  a  carpet. 

In  a  very  human  effort  to  avoid  that  bomb, 
Alexander,  a  few  days  before,  had  arranged  to 
placate  terrorism  with  a  constitution.  To  pla- 
cate is  to  disarm — but  not  everybody.  That 
which  may  pacify  one,  can  infuriate  another. 
It  may  be  that,  in  planning  a  sop  to  Cerberus,  he 
aroused  another  dog.  Yet,  in  any  event,  pre- 
viously, there  had  been  minor  precautions. 

To  prevent  the  entrance  of  foes,  Ivan  ringed 


King  Terror  207 

the  realm  with  forts.  To  prevent  the  entrance 
of  ideas,  Nicholas  established  a  quarantine.  To 
prevent  the  entrance  of  death,  Alexander  put 
police.  Incoming  ships  were  searched,  incom- 
ing travellers  stripped.  Bales  of  tea,  brought 
on  camels  from  China,  were  turned  inside  out. 
For  an  incautious  word,  the  mines!  On  the 
vaguest  suspicion,  the  gallows! 

To  death,  what  were  these  precautions?  It 
had  not  quite  got  him  yet,  but  terror  had  and  so 
potently  that  this  man  who  was  potent  also, 
signed  a  ukase  convoking  a  national  assembly. 

It  is  said  that  Alexander's  son  protested.  He 
was  put  under  arrest.  It  is  said  that  Alexan- 
der's brother  also  protested  but,  more  adroitly, 
to  others  than  the  tsar.  It  may  be  a  coincidence 
but  promptly  the  honeyed  death  was  served. 
Similarly,  it  may  be  another  coincidence  that 
the  ukase,  already  in  type,  disappeared.  But 
it  is  a  fact  that  absolutism  remained. 

After  one  Alexander,  another.  After  a  scrof- 
ulous father,  a  scrofulous  son,  a  composite  being 
at  once  Torquemada  and  Jack  the  Slipstring,  a 
sceptred  prisoner  projecting  death  from  his  cell 
and  feeding  on  fear,  a  hulking  giant  strong 
enough  to  fell  an  ox  and  afraid  of  his  shadow, 
an  obese  butcher  with  the  brains  of  a  mujik  and 
the  virulence  of  a  plague. 


208  The  Imperial  Orgy 

A  younger  son,  he  had  not  been  awaited  or 
desired  on  the  throne.  The  death  of  a  brother, 
then  his  father's,  put  him  there.  He  did  not 
want  it.  Reigning  over  Russia,  once  the  grand- 
est of  mundane  vocations,  terrorism  had  di- 
vested of  any  charm.  The  savour  of  the  orgy 
had  gone.  As  grand-duke,  if  he  knew  little  else 
he  knew  at  least  that.  But  into  dull  brains 
dreams  will  creep.  He  fancied  that  he  had 
been  miraculously  chosen  to  incarnate  the  theo- 
cratic power  which  his  father  said,  and  not  only 
said  but  believed,  was  a  gift  personally  bestowed 
on  him  by  the  Almighty.  He  fancied  that  the 
sacrament  of  coronation  induced  regeneration 
and  that  in  the  attending  hypostasis  he  would  be 
transformed  into  a  god. 

It  is  unbelievable,  but  everything  is  unbeliev- 
able in  this  creature  who  managed  to  be  both  a 
nigger  king  and  a  state  prisoner  and  who,  how- 
ever he  may  be  regarded,  supped  terror  with  a 
long  spoon.  That  terror  he  felt  it  his  divine 
mission  to  disperse.  Dissent  was,  he  imagined, 
the  cause,  and  dissent  meant  to  him  everything 
that  was  not  orthodox  and  illiterate.  Terror- 
ists, nihilists,  Jews  and  Gentiles,  he  jumbled  con- 
fusedly in  what  little  mind  he  had.  They  were 
all  abominable  in  the  sight  of  Heaven,  vermin 
that  it  was  for  him,  as  Heaven's  emanation,  to 


King  Terror  209 

destroy.  Piously  and  austerely  he  began,  for 
pious  and  austere  he  was. 

Pobiedenostsev,  procurator  of  the  holy  synod, 
a  thin-lipped  hyena  with  a  vulture's  beak,  cat- 
ered diabolically  to  that  piety.  In  submitting 
measures,  diabolic  in  themselves,  he  always  cited 
a  text  from  the  Bible.  Vichnegradski,  minis- 
ter of  finance,  a  clever  rogue,  heard  of  it  and 
cited  two  texts.  He  impressed  the  tsar  greatly. 
Dagmar  of  Denmark,  Alexander's  wife,  a  gentle 
soul,  gentle  at  least  by  comparison  with  him, 
cited  texts  also  and  cited  them  but  once.  Char- 
ity is  the  New  Testament  told  in  a  word.  In 
connection  with  his  Judenhetze  she  reminded 
him  of  it. 

"Ah,  yes,  my  dear,"  the  sanctimonious  Ne- 
buchadnezzar replied.  "But  we  must  never 
forget  that  it  was  the  Jews  who  crucified  our 
Lord." 

The  Jews  did  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  that 
is  another  page  from  the  arcana  celestia,  in  ad- 
dition to  being  beside  the  issue,  which  this  man 
made  very  poignant.  His  father  had  estab- 
lished courts  where  defendants  were  at  least 
tried  in  public.  The  son  abolished  them. 
Then  the  Jew  baiting  began. 

At  the  time  there  were  five  million  Jews  in 
Russia,  exactly  five  million  too  many,   almost 


210  The  Imperial  Orgy 

every  one  of  whom  was  more  intelligent  than  the 
emperor.  They  were  evicted,  despoiled,  plun- 
dered, hounded  and  hunted  into  pariah  com- 
munities, piled  in  on  top  of  one  another  like 
grasshoppers  in  a  ditch.  Here  and  there  were 
priests'  hunts.  The  Judenhetze  was  every- 
where. It  would  have  been  joy  to  him  could  he 
have  destroyed  them  all.  Nor  was  Israel  alone 
afflicted.  The  attitude  of  the  fourteenth  Louis 
to  the  Huguenots  was  courteous  by  comparison 
to  the  third  Alexander's  treatment  of  the  Luth- 
erans. In  Nero,  Christianity  had  a  foe  less 
malign  than  he.  He  issued  edicts  that  would 
have  penalised  the  Apostles,  ukases  that  would 
have  outlawed  the  Christ.  At  any  criticism  in 
the  Times,  which  Dagmar  read,  he  foamed  at 
the  mouth.  Had  the  editors  been  in  Russia 
their  shrift  would  have  been  short. 

"They  are  a  set  of  hogs,"  he  wittily  remarked. 

Yet  it  was  this  man  that  kept  Europe  at  peace. 
The  dishwashers  of  history  have  said  that  his 
motive  was  religious.  The  motive,  less  spiritual 
than  physical,  was  due  to  the  fact  that  a  fat  tyr- 
ant, afraid  of  nothing  but  danger,  did  not  care 
to  incur  the  risk  and  discomfort  of  mounting  a 
horse.  He  had  other  risks  to  consider.  Bar- 
ring his  father,  no  modern  monarch  had  more. 
Barring  his  son,  no  autocrat  led  a  life  such  as  he. 


A  I  I  X  WDI-R    III 


King  Terror  211 

In  Petersburg,  when  he  drove,  a  cloud  of 
Cossacks  enveloped  him;.  The  empty  streets 
were  swept.  No  one  was  permitted  there. 
When  he  journeyed,  it  was  over  rails  uninter- 
ruptedly guarded,  minutely  patroled.  The  route 
was  a  lane  of  troops.  The  train,  divided  into 
four  sections,  made  it  difficult  to  conjecture  in 
which  of  them  he  hid.  But  not  impossible. 
The  right  one  was  dynamited.  From  the  wreck 
he  disentangled  his  wife,  his  daughter  and  him- 
self. About  them  were  guards  dead  and  dying. 
The  girl,  flinging  herself  at  him,  cried: — "Oh, 
papa,  now  they  will  come  and  murder  us  all!" 

At  that  cry,  the  charwomen  of  history  have 
wept.  But  at  the  cries  of  countless  children 
whom  this  Nebuchadnezzar  devoured,  not  a 
word.  Perhaps  it  was  a  negligible  detail.  But 
though  terrorists  did  not  again  alarm  the  girl, 
they  had  not  done  with  him.  Terror,  more  con- 
stant than  they,  had  not  either. 

Thereafter,  his  residence  became  a  secret.  On 
his  palaces  flags  flaunted,  but,  among  them  all, 
where  he  was,  Russia  did  not  know.  In  town, 
his  home  was  a  fortress;  in  the  country,  a  bas- 
tille. Approach  to  either  was  impossible. 
Every  avenue  was  guarded.  Every  hour  the 
guard  was  changed.  Princes,  who  happened  to 
be  stopping  at  one  or  the*  other  of  them,  were 


212  The  Imperial  Orgy 

forbidden  at  any  time,  night  or  day,  to  lock  their 
door.  However  becoroneted  their  belongings, 
they  were  searched. 

Visits  were  not  encouraged.  The  man  fought 
shy  even  of  his  relatives.  He  knew  them.  On 
an  Easter  egg  he  found  a  terrorist  threat;  in  a 
family  album  a  terrorist  face.  In  spite  of  pa- 
tient precautions,  death's-heads  fluttered  in  the 
dreary  halls  through  which  he  slunk,  a  hang- 
man shaking  at  shadows,  an  emperor  who  con- 
tinued to  be  executioner  but  who  had  ceased  to 
be  tsar,  a  monarch  turned  mole,  burying  him- 
self behind  walls  which  could  not  shelter  him 
from  fright,  invoking  saints  and  signing  the 
death-warrants  of  officers  of  his  household,  leav- 
ing to  take  care  of  itself  an  empire  which  he  was 
no  more  fitted  to  rule  than  a  sea-serpent  is  com- 
petent to  be  an  apothecary,  going  mad  before  go- 
ing to  his  Maker,  driven  mad  by  one  who  had 
come  unawares  as  thieves  and  angels  do. 

The  visit,  a  little  drama  in  itself  will  be  told 
in  a  moment. 

Meanwhile,  Israel  agonised.  In  a  district 
where  other  game  was  scant,  a  prince  hunted 
Jews.  One  appeal  remained,  it  was  to  God. 
In  secret  synagogues,  the  candles  were  reversed 
and  in  the  name  that  contains  forty-two  letters; 
in    the   name   of   the   Tetragrammaton;    in   the 


King  Terror  2 13 

name  of  the  Globes  and  the  Wheels ;  in  the  name 
of  Him  who  said,  "I  am  that  I  am  and  who  shall 
be,"  the  great  ban,  Schammatha,  was  pro- 
nounced. Ofanim  were  implored  to  repeat  the 
malediction.  Jehovah  was  supplicated  to  rain 
on  the  tsar  every  curse  in  the  Roll  of  the  Law. 
The  Lord  of  Hosts  was  adjured  to  blot  him  out 
from  under  the  sky. 

In  the  Orient,  mantras  are  believed  to  be  ef- 
fective. Russia  was  always  Asiatic.  The  in- 
cantations of  the  secret  synagogues  vibrated,  as- 
cended and  perhaps  were  heard. 

At  Livadia,  the  emperor  fell  ill.  The  ail- 
ment was  slight,  an  attack  of  coryza,  which  nor- 
mally lasts  a  week,  unless  the  patient  is  carefully 
tended,  in  which  event  it  may  persist.  The  im- 
perial coryza  persisted  and  pleurisy  developed. 

Tn  Moscow,  at  the  time,  was  a  specialist,  ec- 
centric and  successful.  His  name  was  Zak- 
karin.  Summoned  to  the  Crimea,  he  came  and 
diagnosed.  It  would  have  been  interesting  to 
have  seen  him  at  it.  If  he  had  been  a  terrorist 
he  could  have  killed  the  tsar  and  been  torn  to 
bits  the  next  minute.  Zakkarin  was  not  a  ter- 
rorist. He  was  a  physician.  As  physician  he 
prescribed  a  remedy  which,  precautionally,  he 
had  brought.     Uncomplainingly,  the  august  pa- 


214  The  Imperial  Orgy 

tient  deigned  to  take  it.     Zakkarin  was  looking 
at  him. 

It  would  have  been  still  more  interesting  to 
have  seen  that  look.  Shakespearian,  disquieting 
and  yet  serene,  it  was  a  look  that  said,  "At  last!" 

There  was  not  much  room  in  the  camp-cot 
which  the  third  Alexander  habitually  used,  but 
in  it,  from  before  that  look,  he  shrank. 

Beside  him,  stood  the  physician.  The  room, 
vast,  high-ceiled,  furnished  in  the  large  Victor- 
ian manner,  was  covered  with  wall-paper  manu- 
factured in  Manchester  to  frighten  children. 
Behind  Zakkarin,  was  Dagmar.  Behind  her 
was  the  procurator  of  the  holy  synod,  together 
with  an  officer  of  the  household.  In  the  hall 
were  servants.  Beyond  were  guards.  With- 
out, enveloping  the  palace,  was  a  sotnia  of  Cos- 
sacks. Yet,  unperceived,  unheralded,  unan- 
nounced, with  no  show  of  royal  honours,  a  great 
king  had  come. 

The  emperor,  unaware  as  yet  of  that,  but  sub- 
consciously stirred,  poked  his  head  at  the  physi- 
cian. 

"What  are  you?" 

Zakkarin,  leaning  forward,  whispered  it.  "A 
Jew." 

"A  Jew!"  the  obese  butcher  shrieked. 


King  Terror  215 

Zakkarin  turned  and  explained.  "His  ma- 
jesty is  delirious." 

He  turned  anew  to  his  patient  and  whispered 
again.     "You  are  doomed." 

Alexander,  to  shriek  his  fright,  had  raised 
himself.  But  the  whispers  were  potent.  More 
potent  still  was  the  drug.  He  fell  back.  The 
ban,  too,  had  fallen.  Israel  had  triumphed 
where  terrorism  failed. 

"Weep,  Russia!"  ran  the  official  notice  in  the 
next  issue  of  the  Novoye  Vremya.  "The  em- 
peror is  dead!" 

Zakkarin  was  given  the  Nevski  decoration  and 
the  usual  diamonds.  In  derision,  he  accepted 
them. 

Another  Te  Deum  mounted.  But  the  orgy, 
long  since  embittered,  was  drawing  to  a  close. 


X 

THE  WHIRLWIND 

IT  has  been  said  that  England  conquered  half 
the  world  in  a  fit  of  absent-mindedness.  A 
fit  of  abstraction,  let  us  say.  While  Eng- 
land abstracted,  Russia  absorbed.  She  absorbed 
steadily,  stealthily,  civilly,  avoiding  noise  and 
offence.  Her  policy,  the  most  unscrupulous 
and  successful  in  history,  was  one  which  there 
was  no  change  of  administration  to  alter,  no  in- 
coming government  to  reverse.  Technically 
what  the  tsar  willed,  it  consisted  in  considering 
the  end,  never  the  means,  in  turning  treaties  into 
memoranda  of  agreements  that  were  not  to  be 
kept,  in  retreating  the  better  to  advance,  in 
avoiding  haste  but  ever  forward,  in  transform- 
ing an  obscure  principality  into  an  empire  that 
covered  one-seventh  of  the  land  surface  of  the 
globe. 

Relatively  untrammelled  and  very  gay,  until 
latterly  it  was  a  round  of  festivities,  soirees  in 
the  fairyland  of  Scheherazade  that  were  fol- 
lowed  by   a   frog   dance   through    Manchuria. 

216 


The  Whirlwind  217 

Not  so  long  ago  either.  One  can  still  hear  the 
admirable  orchestra  of  a  nation,  apparently  in- 
vincible, executing  Slav  airs  in  Cathay,  seren- 
ading the  dowager,  singing  to  her  that  they  were 
natural  affinities,  that,  under  the  khans,  Mus- 
covy and  Mongolia  were  one.  En  sourdine, 
were  roulades  not  intended  for  her  ear,  blythe 
airs  that  told  of  a  state  dinner  in  the  Forbidden 
City,  with  after  revels  in  Delhi  and  Stamboul. 

Quelle  reve!  Too  fair  though,  at  any  rate  for 
Russia,  thought  the  Wilhelmstrasse,  where  also 
hung  that  opium  dream. 

Obliquely,  China  eyed  them  both.  The 
dowager  of  nations,  the  eldest  of  realms,  anterior 
to  every  monarchy  and  indifferent  to  all,  she  has 
sat  in  history  aloof,  her  robes  of  silk  about  her, 
in  an  attitude  of  supreme  disdain.  Beside  her 
arts  and  wiles,  those  of  dead  Greece  and  buried 
Rome  were  modern  creations.  Before  Nineveh, 
before  Eridu  and  Ur,  China  was.  She  has  had 
all  time,  as  these  have  had  their  day.  The  rise 
of  kingdoms,  the  fall  of  empires,  left  her  un- 
moved. Russian  cajolements  and  Prussian 
snares  might  disgust,  her  repose  remained  un- 
altered. 

At  the  time,  the  Shah  of  Persia,  the  Shah-an- 
Shah,  King  of  kings,  Regent  of  (he  Prophet,  was 
a  spider   in    Russian   jelly.     The   winged    bulls 


2l8  The  Imperial  Orgy 

that  guarded  the  palaces  of  Xerxes  and  of  Da- 
rius were  dead  Turn  as  he  might  from  them 
to  Mekka,  he  was  doomed.  Doomed,  too,  was 
that  other  venomous  insect,  the  Shadow  of  God 
on  Earth,  who  throned  in  Stamboul. 

Already,  in  Afghan  passes,  Cossacks  were 
peering  at  the  gates  of  Herat.  At  a  signal,  they 
would  have  occupied  Kabul  and  fought  on  and 
down  perhaps,  or  tried  to  fight,  to  the  monkey- 
haunted  temples  of  Benares  and  the  blue  gulf 
of  Bengal.  It  is  improbable  that  they  could 
have  got  there.  Yet,  given  that  signal  and  the 
history  of  the  world  might  have  changed.  The 
powers  invisible  willed  otherwise.  What  they 
willed,  Napoleon  perhaps  foresaw. 

"Prussia,"  said  Napoleon,  "will  develop  into 
a  Germany  reconstituted,  but  that  phase  will  be 
brief.  Anarchy  will  throw  her  back  where  she 
began.  Austria  will  crumble,  Italy  become 
united,  and  the  role  of  France  be  intellectual." 

Napoleon  added: — "The  supremacy  of  the 
world  will  be  divided  between  England,  mis- 
tress of  Africa,  and  Russia,  established  at  the 
Golden  Horn." 

In  Russia,  everything  goes  wrong.  That  is 
her  history.  Her  history  is  an  uncompleted 
book.  In  some  future  chapter  Napoleon's  pre- 
diction may  come  true.     "Watch   Russia,"  an 


The  Whirlwind  219 

adept  admonished  when  the  war  of  the  world 
began.    "Great  things  are  gestating  there.1' 

Meanwhile,  in  the  gaieties  of  the  Muscovite 
revel,  Germany  urged  Japan  to  interpose.  Ja- 
pan needed  no  urging.  A  dozen  years  or  so 
before,  she  sprang  at  China,  threw  the  old  lady 
down,  and  would  have  pulled  her  clothes  off, 
had  not  the  police  interfered.  What  Japan  had 
then  in  view  she  subsequently  acquired,  with 
Wilson's  blessing.  But  at  the  time,  Russia  got 
in  the  way,  not  omitting  while  she  was  at  it,  to 
subtilise  a  few  odds  and  ends  from  the  dowager's 
handbag. 

To  Japan  that  was  highly  unjust.  The  view 
is  amusing.  Russia  and  Japan  were  like  two 
dogs  over  the  same  bone,  only,  of  the  two,  Rus- 
sia had  the  bigger  teeth.  The  teeth  were  false, 
but  so  perfectly  adjusted  that  perhaps  Russia 
herself  did  not  suspect  it,  though  certainly  Ja- 
pan did. 

Japan,  affecting  her  usual  naivete,  backed 
away,  yet  inwardly  ravening,  nursing  her  sus- 
picions, her  grudge,  her  arsenals,  her  warships, 
lie r  Togo,  until  —  Banzai! — the  guns  popping  at 
Port  Arthur  disclosed  to  a  bewildered  world  the 
gigantic  humbug  of  Russian  might. 

Nikolai  the  Last  was  then  at  Tsarskoie  Selo, 
occupied  with  the  puerilities  of  his  empty  mind. 


220  The  Imperial  Orgy 

The  war  did  not  matter.  Word  was  brought 
him  that  his  fleet  was  destroyed.  At  the  mo- 
ment he  was  playing  tennis.  Without  interrupt- 
ing the  game,  he  remarked  that  it  was  a  fine  day. 

The  attitude,  curious  in  itself,  was  charac- 
teristic. In  any  crisis,  he  displayed  it.  When 
told  that  he  must  abdicate,  his  composure  was 
identical.  When  arrested  he  was  equally  un- 
moved. A  prisoner  in  his  own  gardens,  his 
equanimity  endured. 

Such  an  attitude  is  beautiful.  But  in  his  case 
it  proceeded  not  at  all  from  the  impassibility 
of  the  sage,  nor  yet  from  the  serenity  of  the 
philosopher,  but  from  the  indifference  of  the 
witless,  unless  it  were  the  apathy  of  the  drugged. 

In  an  interview  that  appeared — shortly  after 
the  fall  of  the  empire — in  the  Novoye  Vremya, 
Prince  Youssoupov,  a  young  man  related  to  the 
imperial  clan,  said  that  Nikolai  Alexandrovitch 
was  usually  under  the  influence  of  a  drug  which 
a  Thibetan  lama  had  supplied  and  which  was 
administered  by  his  wife. 

None  the  less  he  could  be  witty.  Relatives 
of  his  wrote,  begging  him  to  be  merciful  to  a 
kinsman.  Admirably  he  replied  that  their  au- 
dacity in  addressing  him  was  amazing.  Admir- 
able, too,  was  his  retort  to  petitioners  humbly 


The  Whirlwind  221 

praying  for  a  less  rigorous  regime: — "Don't  in- 
dulge in  senseless  fancies." 

These  epigrams  and  that  attitude  serve  in  a 
measure  to  delineate  the  messiah  of  the  Hague 
Convention,  which  Dr.  Dillon  called  an  ignoble 
farce,  and  which  was  designed  to  jockey  Europe 
into  peacefully  disarming  while  peacefully  Rus- 
sia armed. 

Shifty  and  shallow,  physically  and  mentally 
incapacitated  even  for  military  duty,  his  incom- 
petence was  so  adequately  estimated  that,  before 
the  great  ban  was  pronounced  on  his  father,  he 
was  sent  on  a  junket  through  the  Orient,  where, 
in  some  tiger-hunt,  perhaps,  he  might  decently 
succumb.  In  Japan  he  nearly  did.  An  assault 
was  made  on  him  there,  though  whether  it  were 
prearranged  or  not,  one  may  surmise  and  never 
know.  Then  indolently  the  gorgeous  East  dis- 
gorged the  offered  prey.  Clearly  he  was  des- 
tined to  renew  the  orgy,  to  drink  and  make 
merry,  though  not  to  his  fill.  In  view  of  the 
fashion  in  which  the  cup  was  torn  from  him, 
there  is  little  in  history  more  curious  than  an 
incident  that  occurred  at  his  coronation  and 
which  exactly  paralleled  an  incident  that  hap- 
pened at  the  coronation  of  Louis  XVI.  On  each 
occasion  the  blood  of  thousands  cascaded. 

Otherwise  it  were  interesting  to  have  been  at 


222  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Moscow  when  the  tsar  appeared.  In  a  dark 
uniform,  on  a  pale  horse  and  pale  himself  from 
the  fast  that  preceded  any  coronation,  the  last 
and  least  of  the  great  carnivora  rode  in.  Behind 
him,  in  a  gilded  coach  which  an  imperial  crown 
surmounted,  his  mother  came,  bowing  to  the 
right,  to  the  left,  with  a  grace  mechanical  but 
sovereign.  Already  she  had  recovered  from  the 
loss  of  her  Nebuchadnezzar.  Behind  her,  in 
another  gilt  coach,  but  minus  the  crown  which 
as  yet  was  withheld,  the  tsaritsa  sat,  rigid,  dis- 
dainful, her  mouth  contracted  by  lines  that  were 
to  change  her  face,  then  singularly  beautiful, 
into  a  tragic  and  wasted  mask.  Along  the  route, 
rigid  also,  but  very  gorgeous,  glittered  the  im- 
perial guard.  Back  of  these  swarmed  the  stage- 
managed  unwashed.  Above  was  the  turquoise  of 
the  mid-May  sky. 

In  the  Kreml,  on  the  morrow,  the  archaic, 
fastidious  and  highly  poetic  ceremonial  was 
ministered  to  a  weak  young  man,  for  whom  the 
crown  was  too  heavy — in  the  same  manner  that, 
at  Rheims,  the  sixteenth  Louis  found  his  crown 
too  big — and  who,  bent  beneath  its  weight  and 
that  of  the  bullion  on  his  cloak,  dropped  the 
sceptre,  which  any  gypsy  could  have  foretold 
he  was  destined  to  drop  again.  Beside  him  his 
bride,  born  Alix  of  Hesse,  but  then  Alexandra 


The  Whirlwind  223 

Feodorovna  of  All  the  Russias,  stood  erect,  her 
triply  tiara'd  head  unbowed. 

Afterward,  in  the  glowing  and  legendary 
pomp  of  long  ago,  the  couple  emerged  on  a  ter- 
race, draped  with  imperial  purple  and  cloth  of 
gold,  where  they  looked  on  the  trained  and 
kneeling  crowd  beneath,  and  where  an  eye-wit- 
ness, Marie  of  Rumania,  likened  them,  in  their 
youth  and  splendour,  to  the  young  divinities  of 
old  Greece. 

The  comparison,  trite  perhaps,  is  not  inapt. 
On  that  day,  at  that  moment,  both  leaned  from 
a  parapet  of  the  ideal.  The  parapet  was  very 
fragile.  On  that  day,  throngs  of  the  lowly  that 
had  come  to  acclaim,  remained  to  die.  Herded 
together,  they  were  trampled  to  death.  The 
reign  which  that  day  began  in  blood,  ended  as 
bloodily.  In  it  were  whole  scenes  re-enacted 
from  the  history  of  Louis  XVI. 

Only  the  interludes  differ.  Yet,  even  there, 
there  are  similarities.  From  the  old  memoirs 
of  the  old  French  court,  magicians  peer. 
Through  them  passes  the  enigmatic  figure  of 
Cagliostro  whom,  in  the  court  of  Nicholas  II., 
Rasputin  aped. 

In  the  Winter  Palace  and  afterward  when,  for 
a  reason  that  will  be  recited,  that  palace  was 
abandoned,  crystal-gazers,  astrologers,  soothsay- 


224  The  Imperial  Orgy 

ers  were  ceaselessly  employed,  until,  Rasputin 
supervening,  they  were  thanked  and  dismissed. 

In  the  interim,  minor  events  occurred.  The 
tsaritsa  who  had  snubbed  everybody,  including 
Victoria  R.  I.,  contrived  to  present  the  curious 
spectacle  of  an  empress  boycotted  in  her  court. 
Perhaps  there  is  no  debt  more  faithfully  ac- 
quitted than  that  of  contempt,  and  the  disdain 
which  this  woman  dispensed  was  such  that,  bar- 
ring officials  and  other  people  too  servile  to  be 
affronted,  those  commanded  to  court-functions 
neglected  to  appear.  Had  these  negligences 
been  confined  to  a  few,  the  manners  of  the  negli- 
gent might  have  been  corrected  in  the  finishing 
school  that  Siberia  was.  But  the  penalising  of 
all  the  aristocracy  being,  not  impossible  cer- 
tainly, but  perhaps  injudicious,  the  Winter 
Palace  which,  the  Vatican  alone  excepted,  was 
the  largest  and  most  regal  residence  extant,  be- 
came a  haunt  of  caretakers,  a  haunt,  too,  of 
ghosts. 

The  domestic  life  of  the  sovereigns  was,  mean- 
while, eminently  correct.  Nikolai  Alexandro- 
vitch,  a  model  husband,  maintained  and  very 
sumptuously  a  lady  of  the  ballet.  Therewith,  a 
devoted  father,  he  had  but  one  regret.  He 
lacked  an  heir.  To  comfort  him,  the  birth  of 
the    tsarevitch    was    mediumistically    foretold, 


The  Whirlwind  225 

though,  it  may  be  that  in  the  child's  advent, 
Prince  Orlov  collaborated.  So  at  least  it  has 
been  said.  It  has  been  also  said  that  the  boy's 
potential  ability  to  have  children  of  his  own  an 
anarchist  eliminated. 

These  tales  may  be  untrue.  What  exceeds 
them  is  the  spectacle  of  an  empress  owned  by 
a  peasant.  Rasputin  dominated  that  woman 
who,  domineering  herself,  dominated  her  hus- 
band. Yet  that  could  not  have  been  difficult. 
Without  any  will  of  his  own,  without  any  ideas 
except  such  as  concerned  his  prerogatives  and, 
like  the  Emperor  Claudius — Messalina's  hus- 
band— always  of  the  opinion  of  the  one  who 
spoke  last,  which,  in  this  instance,  was  the  tsar- 
itsa,  Nikolai  Alexandrovitch  presented  a  per- 
fectly defined  case  of  aboulia.  It  was  not  he 
who  ruled,  it  was  his  wife,  whom  Rasputin  gov- 
erned. At  a  gesture  from  the  latter,  policies 
were  altered,  measures  reversed.  At  a  gesture, 
anyone,  no  matter  what  the  rank  and  the  higher 
the  better,  was  dismissed.  At  any  remonstrance, 
exile. 

In  the  gardens  of  Tsarskoie  Sclo,  there  was  a 
chapel  and,  under  it,  a  crypt  beautified  with 
Byzantine  art,  with  jewelled  marvels,  with  bro- 
cades which  the  centuries  had  faded;  a  crypt 
mystically  embellished  and  of  which  the  peace 


226  The  Imperial  Orgy 

was  stirred  only  by  the  choir  in  the  chapel  above. 
There,  the  haughtiest  woman  on  earth  consorted 
with  an  ignoble  and  sinister  satyr. 

Rasputin  entered  history,  dramatically,  in  a 
murder  and,  quite  as  dramatically,  vacated  it, 
murdered  in  turn.  Originally  a  vermin-eaten 
peasant  and  always  a  venomous  brute,  the  mur- 
der with  which  he  was  associated  singularly  re- 
sembled the  one  related  by  Erckmann-Chatrian 
in  the  Polish  Jew.  The  details  are  nearly  iden- 
tical, except  that  while,  in  the  novel,  the  crimi- 
nal went  mad,  Rasputin  went  free — to  become  a 
prophet,  a  saint,  possessed,  as  he  pleasantly  de- 
scribed himself,  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 

In  spite  of  which,  in  spite  too  of  practises 
that  only  reticences  can  convey,  he  rose,  as  Pe- 
ter's laundress  rose,  on  the  escalator  of  fate,  from 
the  soil  to  the  throne.  There  he  was  waited 
on  by  the  dignitaries  of  the  empire,  as  Zubov 
was  valeted  by  the  princes  of  the  realm.  In  him 
the  Pompadour  lineage  revived.  For  the  first 
time  in  history,  a  mujik  was  tsar. 

A  swarthy  blackguard,  thaumaturge  and 
comedian,  his  power  over  the  empress  was  due 
to  two  factors,  perhaps  to  three.  The  third 
may  have  been  the  woman's  dementia.  Apart 
from  that,  Rasputin  possessed  the  coercive  spells 
of  magnetism  and  clairvoyance.    The  other  fac- 


MIX  OF  HESSE 

Wll  i    01    sn  HOI  IS  mi    i  \sr 


The  Whirlwind  227 

tor,  and  probably  the  most  potent,  was  a  doctrine 
that  he  advanced  as  his  own  but  which,  a  cen- 
tury earlier,  Boileau  summarised  as  the  enjoy- 
ment in  paradise  of  the  pleasures  of  hell. 

The  doctrine,  known  as  quietism,  originated 
with  Molinos,  a  Madrilene  monk.  Morbid  as 
was  everything  that  came  from  Spain,  it  held 
that  temptations  are  the  means  employed  by  God 
to  purge  the  soul  of  passion;  that  to  mortify  the 
flesh  it  should  be  gratified;  that  in  the  omni- 
sapience  of  the  divine,  man  is  saved  not  merely 
by  righteousness  but  by  evil,  by  crapulence  as 
well  as  continence. 

These  tenets  which  Rasputin  imposed,  were 
accepted  by  the  empress  in  that  crypt,  where  she 
was  followed  by  her  daughters,  whose  governess, 
Mademoiselle  Toutschev,  complained  to  their 
father  that  Rasputin  visited  them  at  night. 
Whether  actual  relations  occurred  is  obscure  and 
unimportant.  It  has  been  more  or  less  au- 
thoritatively stated  that  they  did  occur  and 
whether  the  statement  be  true  or  false,  it  was 
one  of  the  causes  that  led  to  the  mujik's  death. 

At  the  time,  as  in  Rome  before  the  fall,  every- 
thing was  for  sale.  Before  the  fall  of  the  Rus- 
sian empire,  place,  power,  army  contracts,  min- 
isterial portfolios,  everything,  the  virtue  of 
women,  the  honour  of  men,  the  defense  of  the 


228  The  Imperial  Orgv 

realm,  everything  was  up  for  auction,  except  the 
throne  and  that  only  because  in  it  sat  the  auc- 
tioneer, who  had  to  sit  somewhere  pending  its 
projected  sale  to  curio-collectors  in  the  Wil- 
helmstrasse. 

Before  that  could  occur,  in  the  streets,  thea- 
tres and  basilicas  of  the  capital,  the  national  an- 
them was  sung.  The  anthem  was  a  thanksgiv- 
ing for  Rasputin's  death.  Rasputin,  invited  to 
supper  at  the  residence  of  Prince  Youssoupov, 
went  there  flanked  by  the  prefect  of  police  whom 
the  prince  ejected.  Then  he  was  killed  and  his 
body,  thrown  in  the  Neva,  from  which  it  was 
fished,  was  buried  in  the  crypt  beneath  the  chapel 
at  Tsarskoie  Selo.  After  the  fall  of  the  em- 
pire, the  body  was  exhumed,  spat  on,  destroyed. 

Sic  semper,  perhaps.  A  blackmailing  tyrant 
in  Germany's  pay,  Rasputin  was  hated  as  thor- 
oughly as  Nikolai  was  despised.  Other  sov- 
ereigns had  been  feared,  loathed,  revered,  ig- 
nored and  forgot.  For  Nikolai  Alexandrovitch 
there  was  only  contempt,  in  which  his  wife 
joined.  She  regarded  him  as  Catherine  the 
Greater  regarded  Peter  the  Small  and,  through  a 
myopia  which  the  glare  of  regalia  may  have  in- 
duced, regarded  herself  as  another  Star  of  the 
North. 

An  ungracious  woman,  tactless,  acrimonious 


The  Whirlwind  229 

and  stupid,  a  woman  who  never  unbent  and 
never  smiled,  she  was  highly  imaginative.  Ma- 
rie of  Rumania,  a  kinswoman  who  was  as  close 
to  her  as  anyone  could  get,  said  that  she  be- 
lieved herself  infallible,  supreme,  unique,  lifted 
immeasurably  above  all  mankind.  It  was  a  be- 
lief that  some  of  the  Caesars  entertained  and 
from  which  their  madness  resulted.  In  shar- 
ing it,  this  woman  may  have  become  insane, 
though  quite  as  readily  her  dementia — if  de- 
mented she  were — may  have  been  congenital. 
Insanity  is  hereditary  in  the  Hessian  house  of 
Brabant.  Her  brother's  favourite  recreation 
was  tatting.  But  the  woman's  opinion  of  her- 
self was  otherwise  and  quite  as  agreeably  ex- 
emplified. Fancying  herself  supernormal,  she 
believed  in  spiritist  mysticism,  believed  too  that 
her  station  required  that  she  should  appear  in 
gala  robes  at  breakfast.  The  robes  themselves 
were  those  of  a  parvenu.  Yet  always  perhaps 
a  false  conception  of  religion  is  inseparable 
from  bad  taste  in  dress,  and  her  taste  was  such 
that  even  after  the  gala  vulgarity  was  aban- 
doned, the  smart  women  of  Petersburg  took 
her  costumes  as  models  of  what  was  not  to  be 
worn.  Later  still,  she  affected  a  simplicity  of 
attire  that  would  have  been  ostentatious  were  it 
not  for  the  ribbons  of  jewels  that  she  wore  even 


230  The  Imperial  Orgy 

in  the  privacy  of  her  own  apartments,  where 
she  sat  by  the  hour,  without  moving,  without 
speaking,  lost  in  some  dream,  perhaps  of  Or- 
lov,  who  had  killed  himself  and  whose  grave 
she  covered  with  flowers  and  tears. 

It  was  years  later  that  the  mujik  appeared 
and  departed.  Yet  when  this  woman  also  de- 
parted, and  on  a  journey  that  took  her  farther 
and  deeper  than  any  empress  ever  went,  the 
guards  at  Tsarskoie  Selo  shouted  their  derision: 

"Goodbye,  Madame  Rasputin!" 

Her  husband  has  been  described  as  a  shadow. 
A  shadow,  yes,  but  a  shadow  that  crushed. 
Long  before,  on  what  is  known  as  Bloody  Sun- 
day, a  body  of  workmen  set  out  to  present  a 
petition  to  him,  their  little  father.  Before  they 
could  reach  the  Winter  Palace,  their  little  father 
had  them  mowed.  A  few,  that  were  wounded 
merely,  survived.  It  was  forbidden  to  collect 
a  kopeck  for  them. 

At  that  time  the  orgy  had  been  resumed.  Yet 
for  the  fair  chalices  of  crime,  the  jewelled  cups 
of  mud  and  blood,  and  that  table  set  with  the 
epergnes  of  felony,  the  tuberoses  of  torture  and 
imperial  behests,  another  reveller,  a  noceur 
gayer  than  all  the  autocrats  of  all  the  Russias, 
stood  by,  laughing  and  jesting,  waiting  with  gal- 
lant unconcern  until  the  clock  should  strike. 


The  Whirlwind  231 

When  the  clock  did  strike,  when  Nikolai 
Alexandrovitch  after  being  deported  was  shot, 
the  alien  and  perhaps  unconsidered  verdict  was 
that  he  had  been  murdered.  On  another  plane 
that  ruling  may  have  been  reversed.  Long 
since,  a  court  of  last  resort  may  have  decided 
that  the  rifle  that  killed  him  was  charged  only 
— and  yet  how  amply! — with  the  tears,  the 
groans,  the  cries  of  the  helpless,  sent  to  typhus, 
to  insanity,  to  death,  massacred  at  his  command. 

Commonsense  might  have  preserved  him. 
But  in  his  case,  in  view  of  the  indigent  men- 
tality of  his  presumptive  ancestors',  common- 
sense  would  have  been  abnormal.  Instead  was  a 
derangement,  clinically  known  as  uranomania. 
A  dwarf  fancied  himself  divine.  It  was  a  fam- 
ily illusion  which,  other  things  being  equal,  he 
might  have  retained.  His  wife  interfered.  She 
also  had  illusions.  She  fancied  that  she  looked 
like  Marie  Antoinette.  It  was  Bazaine  whom 
she  resembled.  Anything  is  possible.  The  day 
may  come  when  she  will  be  canonised. 

In  Hungary,  Attila  is  a  saint.  In  Russia,  Alix 
of  Hesse  may  be  beatified.  Even  otherwise, 
when  history  is  more  intelligently  viewed,  it 
may  be  realised  that  the  powers  unseen  guided 
this  woman  to  open  the  prison  in  which  Ivan 


232  The  Imperial  Orgy 

caged  a  nation  and  for  that,  it  may  be,  men  will 
rise  and  call  her  blessed. 

Previously,  during  a  revolution  that  succeeded 
the  Japanese  war,  this  woman  and  that  shadow 
hid  in  a  palace  that  even  from  afar  one  was  for- 
bidden to  stop  and  look  at.  Guarded  by  sot- 
nias  of  Cossacks,  there  they  crouched.  Not 
alone.  Terror  crouched  there  also.  Through 
grated  casements  the  kramola  peered.  From 
that  mysterious  tribunal  of  the  revolutionists, 
fluttered  the  death-heads  that  the  previous  in- 
cumbent knew  and  from  which  he,  too,  had 
shrunk. 

In  proportion  as  graves  multiplied  and  the 
population  of  Siberia  increased,  the  revolution 
waned.  With  a  rictus,  Terror  passed,  waving 
a  hand,  calling,  "Au  plaisir!"  When  he  re- 
turned, he  came  riding  a  whirlwind  that  startled 
a  world  already  inured  to  the  startling  and  in 
which  the  seven  times  twisted  coil  of  state 
snapped  like  a  withered  twig. 

The  cell,  the  knout,  torture,  exile,  insanity, 
death,  what  could  be  more  instructive?  For 
centuries  Russia  had  had  a  university  training 
in  all  that  was  meant  and  done  by  the  tsar's 
command.  There  is  no  shape  of  demonism,  no 
form  of  horror  that  she  did  not  know  by  heart. 
That  poor  heart  of  hers  was  a  doctor  of  philos- 


The  Whirlwind  233 

ophy  in  imperial  crime.  When,  therefore,  the 
tsar  ceased  to  instruct  and  it  was  Russia  that 
taught,  the  benefits  of  her  liberal  education 
leaped. 

Hunland,  long  since,  had  launched  her  holy 
crusade.  Russia,  then,  was  needy  as  a  knife- 
grinder.  Internally  disorganised,  bureaucrati- 
cally  corrupt,  she  lacked  every  equipment,  brains 
included.  Otherwise  she  was  admirably  pre- 
pared. There  were  Huns  in  the  army,  in  the 
navy,  in  the  ministry  of  war,  at  the  tsar's  elbow, 
in  his  bed.  It  was  from  these  batrachian  in- 
fluences that  bolshevism  afterward  developed. 
Germany  paralysed  Russia  with  that  ankylosis 
which  was  to  make  her  wolfishly  hideous  and 
rid  her  of  religion,  commerce,  money  and  sense. 
But  the  situation,  highly  problematic,  has  an- 
other aspect  which,  shortly,  will  be  considered. 
Meanwhile,  gangrened  already,  Russia  fought. 

Presently  the  Wilhelmstrasse,  confronted  by 
collapse,  floated  offers  of  ambiguous  peace.  The 
allies  rejected  them.  Privately  the  Kaiser  ap- 
plied to  his  kinswoman,  Alix  of  Hesse,  grand- 
daughter of  Victoria,  of  whom  he  was  grand- 
son. In  the  service  of  a  cousin  and  of  Ger- 
many, tlie  Russian  empress  ordered  a  mas- 
querade. The  mask  was  famine.  Russia  beheld 
that  spectre,  conjured,  a  jack-in-the-box,  by  a 


234  1  ^e  Irnperial  Orgy 

woman.  There  was  food  in  plenty,  only  it  was 
hidden.  The  famine  was  bogus,  hence  the  dis- 
guise. 

The  Duma  lifted  it.  Behind,  was  the  tsaritsa. 
Behind  her  were  the  court  reactionaries.  Be- 
hind them  was  the  prefect  of  police.  All  were 
evoking  the  spectre,  inciting  riots,  serving  Ger- 
many, engineering  a  separate  peace. 

The  Duma  informed  the  tsar.  For  reply, 
the  tsar  ukased  the  Duma  out.  The  Duma  ig- 
nored the  ukase.  Ignored  it!  Any  former  tsar 
would  have  had  every  canaille  in  the  assembly 
first  knouted,  then  dispatched.  But  formerly 
there  were  two  Russias;  one  above,  the  other 
below;  one,  the  tsar;  the  other,  the  nation.  With 
a  sleight-of-hand  unparalleled  and  incompara- 
ble, the  Duma  transposed  them. 

Nikolai  Alexandrovitch  was  then  at  military 
headquarters.  He  started  for  Petrograd.  On 
the  train  he  was  the  autocrat  from  whom  every- 
thing emanated,  emperor  of  All  the  Russias, 
viceroy  of  the  Divine,  sovereign  of  a  hundred 
races,  lord  of  myriad  hosts,  an  anthropomorphic 
god.  When  he  alighted,  he  was  the  perception 
of  a  perceiver,  a  bundle  of  nothing  who  ceased 
shortly  to  be  even  that. 

"Omnia  fui,  nihil  prod  est,"  said  an  expiring 
Caesar,  whom  this  final  Caesar  might  have  mim- 


The  Whirlwind  235 

micked.    Might  have,  yes.     He  lacked  the  wit. 

Over  Russia,  then,  night  still  hung.  Beyond 
was  a  dawn  that  was  to  send  that  night  reeling 
back  into  the  enigma  of  history  from  which 
Russia  had  come.  The  night  was  basaltic.  The 
dawn  was  livid.  In  search  of  one  like  it,  as- 
tronomers will  have  to  look  in  the  astral.  It 
was  the  4awn  of  primitive  man.  From  the 
night  of  an  ended  orgy,  Russia,  livid  as  that 
dawn,  lapsed  back  to  the  stone  age. 

History  has  no  parallel  for  the  relapse.  But 
the  benefits  of  a  very  liberal  education  had  made 
Russia  a  saint  and  a  savage,  a  millionaire  in  rags, 
a  genius  without  culture,  an  entity  to  whom 
meum  and  tuum  were  transposable  abstractions, 
and  which  produced  a  type  that  fused  idealism 
and  knavery,  the  spiritual  and  the  brute,  super- 
stition and  intelligence,  a  type  that  craving  an- 
archy endured  absolutism  and  which  resulted  in 
what  the  world  had  never  seen,  a  nation  attacked 
by  hydrophobia. 

Hydrophobia  is  excessive,  yet,  when  a  shadow 
alighted  from  a  train,  a  page  of  history  turned, 
the  great  book  of  autocracy  closed,  and  with  a 
crash  so  loud  that  the  noise  shook  down  a  prison's 
walls.  A  hundred  and  eighty  million  ignorant, 
helpless,  hungry,  angry,  innocent  prisoners 
found  that  they  were  free. 


236  The  Imperial  Orgy 

Dumbly,  as  prisoners  will,  they  had  dreamed 
of  freedom.  Impotently,  as  prisoners  do,  they 
had  struggled  for  it.  But  in  the  dream,  they 
had  no  belief;  in  the  struggle,  no  conviction.  It 
was  all  too  Utopian.  When,  suddenly,  over- 
night, without  conscious  effort,  Utopia  stretched 
before  them,  it  set  them  mad.  What  had  seemed 
Utopian  became  bedlam. 

Madmen  have  a  point  of  view  which,  when 
considered,  is  always  interesting.  The  idea  of 
these  insane  children,  of  some  of  them  at  least, 
was  to  destroy  everything,  destroy  the  world, 
build  it  anew.  The  idea  seems  insane,  but  seen 
from  an  angle  higher  than  our  own,  may  not  the 
world  need  refurbishing?  In  occult  sanctuaries 
where  causes  appear  and  criticism  vanishes,  so- 
vietism  is  viewed  as  a  supernormal  phenomenon, 
propelled  from  planes  where  events  are  mar- 
shalled, and  designed  to  be  the  obstetricy  of  uni- 
versal palingenesis.  If  the  view  is  correct  noth- 
ing can  prevail  against  it.  But  it  may  not  be 
correct.  In  convulsive  accouchements  Greece 
tried  to  save  her  soul  and  lost  her  independence. 
Similarly,  Rome  dissolved  from  a  republic  into 
an  empire  and  France  saw  the  royal  lilies  change 
into  imperial  bees.  Scepticism  is  history's  bed- 
fellow. History  doubts  that  Russia's  travail  will 
be  less  abortive,  though  philosophy  believes  that 


The  Whirlwind  237 

it  may  be  a  boon.  For  assuming  that  bolshevism 
proceeds  from  a  supermundane  impulsion,  the 
design  may  be  to  provide  the  world  in  general 
and  communism  in  particular  with  an  object 
lesson  in  the  slavery  and  rationed  misery  that 
constitute  the  triumph  of  soviet  ideals.  Unfor- 
tunately, an  age  of  enlightenment  has  never 
dawned  for  the  proletariat  and  from  philosophy 
clairvoyance  has  been  withheld. 

Yet  when  Germany  launched  her  holy  cru- 
sade, a  chela  admonished: — "Watch  Russia! 
Great  things  will  come  from  there." 

What  are  these  things?  The  Lords  of  Karma 
alone  can  tell.  But  Muhammad  is  suggestive. 
The  Prophet  said  that  paradise  lies  in  the 
shadow  of  swords.  Muhammad  was  pleasantly 
figurative  and  so  are  the  swords.  But,  to  reach 
paradise,  always  there  is  a  desert  to  cross,  a 
desert  swept  by  simooms,  peopled  with  djinns. 
The  Lords  of  Karma  alone  can  tell  what  si- 
mooms await  humanity. 


New  York,  June,  JQ20. 


